THE  CANADIAN 
COMMONWEALTH 


AGNES   C- LAU 1 


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THE  CANADIAN  COMMONWEALTH 


PROBLEMS  OF  THE  NATIONS 

Paul  Leland  Haworth,  Ph.  D Editor 


PUBLISHED 

America  in  Ferment       .     .     By  Paul  Leland  Haworth 
Author  of  The  Hays-Tilden  Election, 
Reconstruction  and  Union,  Etc. 

The  Canadian  Commonwealth  .     By  Agnes  C.  Laut 

Author  of  Lords  of  the  North,  Pathfinders  of  the 
West,  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  Etc. 


liJTf  ^(-J   ., 


THE  CANADIAN 
COMMONWEALTH 


AGNES  cTlAUT 

Author  of 

Lords  of  the  North,  Patrfinders  of  ths  West 

Hudson's  Bat  Coup  ant.  Etc. 


EG/ 


INDIANAPOLIS 

THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 


He  //s 


'•'.  "••    Copy  BIGHT  1915  ^^     ^ 

Thb  Bobbs-Meeriil  Compamt 


7 


BWAUNWORTH  ft   ••. 

••OWWDtll*   AND   mtlNTIIW 

•ROOKLVN,   N.   V. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    National  Consciousness 1 

II    Foundation  for  Hope 18 

III  The  Tie  That  Binds 42 

IV  Americanization 6l 

V  Why  Reciprocity  Was  Rejected  ....  80 

VI   The  Coming  of  the  English 9^ 

VII  The  Coming  OF  the  Foreigner       .     .     .     .  Ill 

VIII  The  Coming  of  the  Oriental        .     .     .     .  127 

IX   The  Hindu 1S8 

X    What  Panama  Means l68 

XI   To  Europe  by  Hudson  Bay 19 1 

XII    Some  Industrial  Problems 210 

XIII  How  Governed 223 

XIV  The  Life  of  the  People 246 

XV  Emigration  and  Development       ....  268 

XVI    Defense 282 

XVII   The  Domain  of  the  North 294 

XVIII    Finding  Herself 323 

Index 337 


oo! 


THE  CANADIAN  COMMONWEALTH 


THE 
CANADIAN  COMMONWEALTH 


CHAPTER  I 


NATIONAL  CONSCIOUSNESS 


An  empire  the  size  of  Europe  setting  out  on  her 
career  of  world  history  is  a  phenomenon  of  vast  and 
deep  enough  import  to  stir  to  national  consciousness 
the  slumbering  spirit  of  any  people.  Yet  when  you 
come  to  trace  when  and  where  national  consciousness 
awakened,  it  is  like  following  a  river  back  from  the 
ocean  to  its  mountain  springs.  From  the  silt  borne 
down  on  the  flood-tide  you  can  guess  the  fertile  plains 
watered  and  far  above  the  fertile  plains,  regions  of 
eternal  snow  and  glacial  torrent  warring  turbulently 
through  the  adamantine  rocks.  You  can  guess  the 
eternal  striving,  the  forward  rush  and  the  throwback 
that  have  carved  a  way  through  the  solid  rocks ;  but 
until  you  have  followed  the  river  to  its  source  and 
tried  to  stem  its  current  you  can  not  know. 

1 


^  ...T-WE  .  CANAD.IAN    COMMONWEALTH 

So  of  peoples  and  nations. 

Fifty  years  ago,  as  far  as  world  affairs  were  con- 
cerned, Japan  did  not  exist.  Came  national  conscious- 
ness, and  Japan  rose  like  a  star  dominating  the  Orient. 
A  hundred  years  ago  Germany  did  not  exist.  Came 
national  consciousness  welding  chaotic  principalities 
into  unity,  and  the  mailed  fist  of  the  empire  became  a 
menace  before  which  Europe  quailed.  So  of  China 
with  the  ferment  of  freedom  leavening  the  whole.  So 
of  the  United  States  with  the  Civil  War  blending  into 
a  union  the  diversities  of  a  continent.  When  you  come 
to  consider  the  birth  of  national  consciousness  in  Can- 
ada, you  do  not  find  the  germ  of  an  ambition  to  domi- 
nate, as  in  Japan  and  Germany.  Nor  do  you  find  a 
fight  for  freedom.  Canada  has  always  been  free — 
free  as  the  birds  of  passage  that  winged  above  the 
canoe  of  the  first  voyageur  who  pointed  his  craft  up 
the  St.  Lawrence  for  the  Pacific ;  but  what  you  do  find 
from  the  very  first  is  a  fight  for  national  existence; 
and  when  the  fight  was  won,  Canada  arose  like  a 
wrestler  with  consciousness  of  strength  for  new  des- 
tiny. 

II 

Go  back  to  the  beginning  of  Canada ! 

She  was  not  settled  by  land-seekers.  Neither  was 
she  peopled  by  adventurers  seeking  gold.  The  first 
settlers  on  the  banks  of  the  St.  Lawrence  came  to 


NATIONAL    CONSCIOUSNESS  3 

plant  the  Cross  and  propagate  the  Faith.  True,  they 
found  they  could  support  their  missions  and  extend 
the  Faith  by  the  fur  trade ;  and  their  gay  adventurers 
of  the  fur  trade  threaded  every  river  and  lake  from 
the  St.  Lawrence  to  the  Columbia ;  but,  primarily,  the 
lure  that  led  the  French  to  the  St.  Lawrence  was  the 
lure  of  a  religious  ideal.  So  of  Ontario  and  the  Eng- 
lish provinces.  Ontario  was  first  peopled  by  United 
Empire  Loyalists,  who  refused  to  give  up  their  loy- 
alty to  the  Crown  and  left  New  England  and  the 
South,  abandoning  all  earthly  possessions  to  begin 
hfe  anew  in  the  backwoods  of  the  Great  Lakes  coun- 
try. The  French  came  pursuing  an  ideal  of  religion. 
The  English  came  pursuing  an  ideal  of  government. 
We  may  smile  at  the  excesses  of  both  devotees — 
French  nuns,  who  swooned  in  religious  ecstasy;  old 
English  aristocrats,  who  referred  to  democracy  as  "the 
black  rot  plague  of  the  age" ;  but  the  fact  remains — 
these  colonists  came  in  unselfish  pursuit  of  ideals ;  and 
they  gave  of  their  blood  and  their  brawn  and  all 
earthly  possessions  for  those  ideals ;  and  it  is  of  such 
stuff  that  the  spirit  of  dauntless  nationhood  is  made. 
Men  who  build  temples  of  their  lives  for  ideals  do  not 
cement  national  mortar  with  graft.  They  build  with 
integrity  for  eternity,  not  time.  Their  consciousness 
of  an  ideal  gives  them  a  poise,  a  concentration,  a  sta- 
bility, a  steadiness  of  purpose,  unknown  to  mad  cha- 
sers after  wealth.    Obstinate,  dogged,  perhaps  tinged 


4     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

with  the  self-superior  spirit  of  "I  am  holier  than 
thou" — they  may  be ;  but  men  who  forsake  all  for  an 
ideal  and  pursue  it  consistently  for  a  century  and  a 
half  develop  a  stamina  that  enters  into  the  very  blood 
of  their  race.  It  is  a  common  saying  even  to  this  day 
that  Quebec  is  more  Catholic  than  the  Pope,  and  On- 
tario more  ultra-English  than  England;  and  when 
the  Canadian  is  twitted  with  being  "colonial"  and 
*'crude,"  his  prompt  and  almost  proud  answer  is  that 
he  "goes  in  more  for  athletics  than  esthetics."  "One 
makes  men.    The  other  may  make  sissies." 

With  this  germ  spirit  as  the  very  beginning  of 
national  consciousness  in  Canada,  one  begins  to  under- 
stand the  grim,  rough,  dogged  determination  that  be- 
came part  of  the  race.  Canada  was  never  intoxicated 
with  that  madness  for  Bigness  that  seemed  to  sweep 
over  the  modern  world.  What  cared  she  whether  her 
population  stood  still  or  not,  whether  she  developed 
fast  or  slow,  provided  she  kept  the  Faith  and  pre- 
served her  national  integrity  ?  Flimsy  culture  had  no 
place  in  her  schools  or  her  social  life.  A  solid  basis 
of  the  three  R's — then  educational  frills  if  you  like; 
but  the  solid  basis  first.  Worship  of  wealth  and  envy 
of  material  success  have  almost  no  part  in  Canadian 
life ;  for  the  simple  reason  that  wealth  and  success  are 
not  the  ideals  of  the  nation.  Laurier,  who  is  a  poor 
man,  and  Borden,  who  is  only  a  moderately  well-off 
man,  command  more  social  prestige  in  Canada  than 


NATIONAL    CONSCIOUSNESS  5 

any  millionaire  from  Vancouver  to  Halifax.  If  demos 
be  the  spirit  of  the  mob,  then  Canada  has  no  faintest 
tinge  of  democracy  in  her;  but  inasmuch  as  the 
French  colonists  came  in  pursuit  of  a  religious  ideal 
and  the  English  colonists  of  a  political  ideal,  if  democ- 
racy stand  for  freedom  for  the  individual  to  pursue 
his  own  ideal — then  Canada  is  supersaturated  with 
that  democracy.  Freedom  for  the  individual  to  pur- 
sue his  own  ideal  was  the  very  atmosphere  in  which 
Canada's  national  consciousness  was  bom. 

In  the  West  a  something  more  entered  into  the  na- 
tional spirit.  French  fur-traders,  wood-runners,  voy- 
ageurs  had  drifted  North  and  West,  men  of  infinite 
resources,  as  much  at  home  with  a  frying-pan  over  a 
camp-fire  as  over  a  domestic  hearth,  who  could  wrest 
a  living  from  life  anywhere.  English  adventurers  of 
similar  caliber  had  drifted  in  from  Hudson  Bay. 
These  little  lords  in  a  wilderness  of  savages  had  scat- 
tered west  as  far  as  the  Rockies,  south  to  California. 
They  knew  no  law  but  the  law  of  a  strong  right  arm 
and  kept  peace  among  the  Indians  only  by  a  daunt- 
less courage  and  rough  and  ready  justice.  They 
could  succeed  only  by  a  good  trade  in  furs,  and  they 
could  obtain  a  good  trade  in  furs  only  by  treating  the 
Indians  with  equity.  Every  man  who  plunged  into 
the  fur  wilderness  took  courage  in  one  hand  and  his 
life  in  the  other.  If  he  lost  his  courage,  he  lost  his 
life.    Indian  fray,  turbulent  rapids,  winter  cold  took 


6     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

toll  of  the  weak  and  the  feckless.  Nature  accepts  no 
excuses.  The  man  who  defaulted  in  manhood  was 
wiped  out — sucked  down  by  the  rapids,  buried  in  win- 
ter storms,  absorbed  into  the  camps  of  Indian  degen- 
erates. The  men  who  stayed  upon  their  feet  had  the 
stamina  of  a  manhood  in  them  that  could  not  be  extin- 
guished. It  was  a  wilderness  edition  of  that  daunt- 
lessness  which  brought  the  Loyalists  to  Ontario  and 
the  French  devotees  to  Quebec.  This,  too,  made  for 
a  dogged,  strong,  obstinate  race.  At  the  time  of  the 
fall  of  French  power  at  Quebec  in  1759  there  were 
about  two  thousand  of  these  wilderness  hunters  in  the 
West.  Fifty  years  later  by  way  of  Hudson  Bay  came 
Lord  Selkirk's  Settlers — Orkneymen  and  Highland- 
ers, hardy,  keen  and  dauntless  as  their  native  rock- 
bound  isles. 

These  four  classes  were  the  primary  first  ingredi- 
ents that  went  into  the  making  of  Canada's  national 
consciousness  and  each  of  the  four  classes  was  the 
very  personification  of  strength,  purpose,  courage, 
freedom. 

Ill 

But  Destiny  plays  us  strange  tricks.  When  Que- 
bec fell  in  1759,  New  France  passed  under  the  rule  of 
that  English  and  Protestant  race  which  she  had  been 
fighting  for  two  centuries ;  and  when  the  American 
colonies  won  their  independence  twenty  years  later 


NATIONAL    CONSCIOUSNESS  7 

and  the  ultra-English  Loyalists  trekked  In  thousands 
across  the  boundary  to  what  are  now  Montreal  and 
Toronto  and  Cobourg,  there  came  under  one  govern- 
ment two  races  that  had  fought  each  other  in  raid  and 
counter-raid  for  two  centuries — alien  and  antagonistic 
in  religion  and  speech.  It  is  only  in  recent  years  un- 
der the  guiding  hand  of  Sir  Wilfred  Laurier  that  the 
ancient  antagonism  has  been  pushed  off  the  boards. 

The  War  of  1812  probably  helped  Canada's  na- 
tional spirit  more  than  It  hurt  It.  It  tested  the  French 
Canadian  and  found  him  loyal  to  the  core;  loyal,  to 
be  sure,  not  because  he  loved  England  more  but  rather 
because  he  loved  the  Americans  less.  He  felt  surer  of 
religious  freedom  under  English  rule,  which  guaran- 
teed it  to  him,  than  under  the  rule  of  the  new  republic, 
which  he  had  harried  and  which  had  harried  him  in 
border  raid  for  two  centuries.  The  War  of  1812  left 
Canada  crippled  financially  but  stronger  in  national 
spirit  because  she  had  tested  her  strength  and  repelled 
invasion. 

If  mountain  pines  strike  strong  roots  into  the  eter- 
nal rocks  because  they  are  tempest-tossed  by  the  wild- 
est winds  of  heaven,  then  the  next  twenty  years  were 
destined  to  test  the  very  fiber  of  Canada's  national 
spirit.  All  that  was  weak  snapped  and  went  down. 
The  dry  rot  of  political  theory  was  flung  to  dust. 
Special  Interests,  pampered  privileges,  the  claims  of 
the  few  to  exploit  the  many,  the  claims  of  the  many  to 


8      THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

rule  wisely  as  the  few — ^the  shibboleth  of  theorists,  the 
fine  spun  cobwebs  of  the  doctrinaires,  governmental 
ideals  of  brotherhood  that  were  mostly  sawdust  and 
governmental  practices  that  were  mostly  theft  under 
privilege — all  went  down  in  the  smash  of  the  next 
twenty  years'  tempest.  All  that  was  left  was  what 
was  real ;  what  would  hold  water  and  work  out  in  fact. 
It  is  curious  how  completely  all  records  slur  over 
the  significance  of  the  Rebellion  of  1837.  Canada  is 
sensitive  over  the  facts  of  the  case  to  this  day.  Only 
a  few  years  ago  a  book  dealing  with  the  unvarnished 
facts  of  the  period  was  suppressed  by  a  suit  in  court. 
As  a  rebellion,  1837  was  an  insignificant  fracas.  The 
rebels  both  in  Ontario  and  Quebec  were  hopelessly  out- 
numbered and  defeated.  William  Lyon  MacKenzie, 
the  leader  in  Ontario,  and  Louis  Papineau,  the  leader 
in  Quebec,  both  had  to  flee  for  their  lives.  It  is  a  ques- 
tion if  a  hundred  people  all  told  were  killed.  Prob- 
ably a  score  in  all  were  executed ;  as  many  again  were 
sent  to  penal  servitude ;  and  several  hundreds  escaped 
punishment  by  fleeing  across  the  boundary  and  join- 
ing in  the  famous  night  raids  of  Hunters'  Lodges. 
Within  a  few  years  both  the  leaders  and  exiles  were 
permitted  to  return  to  Canada,  where  they  lived  hon- 
ored lives.  It  was  not  as  a  rebellion  that  1837  was 
epoch-making.  It  was  in  the  clarifying  of  Canada's 
national  consciousness  as  to  how  she  was  to  be  gov- 
erned. 


NATIONAL    CONSCIOUSNESS  9 

Having  migrated  from  the  revolting  colonies  of 
New  England  and  the  South,  the  ultra-patriotic 
United  Empire  Loyalists  unconsciously  felt  them- 
selves more  British  than  the  French  of  Quebec.  Can- 
ada was  governed  direct  from  Downing  Street.  There 
were  local  councils  in  both  Toronto  and  Quebec — or 
Upper  and  Lower  Canada,  as  they  were  called — and 
there  were  local  legislatures ;  but  the  governing  cliques 
were  appointed  by  the  Royal  Governor,  which  meant 
that  whatever  little  clique  gained  the  Governor's  ear 
had  its  little  compact  or  junta  of  friends  and  relatives 
in  power  indefinitely.  There  were  elections,  but  the 
legislature  had  no  control  over  the  purse  strings  of 
the  government.  Such  a  close  corporation  of  special 
interests  did  the  governing  clique  become  that  the 
administration  was  known  in  both  provinces  as  a 
"Family  Compact."  Administrative  abuses  flourished 
in  a  rank  growth.  Judges  owing  their  appointment 
to  the  Crown  exercised  the  most  arbitrary  tyranny 
against  patriots  raising  their  voices  against  govern- 
ment by  special  interests.  Vast  land  grants  were 
voted  away  to  favorites  of  the  Compact.  Public 
moneys  were  misused  and  neither  account  given  nor 
restitution  demanded  from  the  culprit.  Ultra-loyalty 
became  a  fashionable  pose.  When  strolling  actors 
played  American  airs  in  a  Toronto  theater  they  were 
hissed;  and  when  a  Canadian  stood  up  to  those  airs, 
he  was  hissed.     Special  interests  became  intrenched 


10     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

behind  a  triple  rampart  of  fashion  and  administration 
and  loyalty.  Details  of  the  revolt  need  not  be  given 
here.  A  great  love  is  always  the  best  cure  for  a  puny 
affection — a  Juliet  for  a  Rosalind;  and  when  a  pure 
patriotism  arose  to  oust  this  spurious  lip-loyalty, 
there  resulted  the  Rebellion  of  1837. 

The  point  is — ^when  the  rebellion  had  passed,  Can- 
ada had  overthrown  a  system  of  government  by  oli- 
garchy. She  had  ousted  special  interests  forever  from 
her  legislative  halls.  In  a  blood  and  sweat  of  agony, 
on  the  scaffold,  in  the  chain  gang,  penniless,  naked, 
hungry  and  in  exile,  her  patriots  had  fought  the 
dragon  of  privilege,  cast  out  the  accursed  thing  and 
founded  national  life  on  the  eternal  rocks  of  justice 
to  all,  special  privileges  to  none.  Her  patriots  had 
themselves  learned  on  the  scaffold  that  law  must  be  as 
sacredly  observed  by  the  good  as  by  the  evil,  by  the 
great  as  by  the  small.  From  the  death  scaffolds  of 
these  patriots  sprang  that  part  of  Canada's  national 
consciousness  that  reveres  law  next  to  God.  Canada 
passed  through  the  throes  of  purging  her  national 
consciousness  from  1815  to  1840,  as  the  United  States 
passed  through  the  same  throes  in  the  sixties,  but  the 
process  cost  her  half  a  century  of  delay  in  growth 
and  development. 

While  the  union  of  Upper  and  Lower  Canada  put 
p.n  end  to  the  evils  of  special  privileges  in  govern- 
ment, events  had  been  moving  apace  in  the  far  West, 


NATIONAL    CONSCIOUSNESS  11' 

where  roving  traders  and  settlers  were  a  law  imto 
themselves.  Red  River  settlers  of  the  region  now 
known  as  Manitoba  were  clamoring  for  an  end  to  the 
monopoly  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Fur  Company  over 
all  that  region  inland  from  the  Great  Northern  Sea. 
The  discovery  of  gold  had  brought  hordes  of  adven- 
turers pouring  into  Cariboo,  or  what  is  now  known 
as  British  Columbia.  Both  Red  River  and  British 
Columbia  demanded  self-government.  Partly  because 
England  had  delayed  granting  Oregon  self-govern- 
ment, the  settlers  of  the  Columbia  had  set  up  their 
own  provisional  government  and  turned  that  region 
over  to  the  United  States.  We  are  surely  far  enough 
away  from  the  episodes  to  state  frankly  the  facts 
that  similar  underground  intrigue  was  at  work  in  both 
Red  River  and  British  Columbia,  fostered,  much  of 
It,  by  Irish  malcontents  of  the  old  Fenian  raids.  Once 
more  Canada's  national  consciousness  roused  itself  to 
a  bigger  problem  and  wider  outlook.  Either  the  far- 
flung  Canadian  provinces  must  be  bound  together  in 
some  sort  of  national  unity  or — ^the  Canadian  mind 
did  not  let  itself  contemplate  that  "or."  The  prov- 
inces must  be  confederated  to  be  held.  Hence  con- 
federation in  1867  under  the  British  North  American 
Act,  which  is  to  Canada  what  the  Constitution  is  to 
the  United  States.  It  happened  that  Sir  John  Mac- 
donald,  the  future  premier  of  the  Dominion,  had  been 
in  Washington  during  one  period  of  the  Civil  War. 


la    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

He  noted  what  he  thought  was  the  great  defect  of  the 
American  system,  and  he  attributed  the  Civil  War  to 
that  defect — namely,  that  all  powers  not  specifically 
delegated  to  the  federal  government  were  supposed 
to  rest  with  the  states.  Therefore,  when  Canada 
formed  her  federation  of  isolated  provinces,  Sir  John 
and  the  other  famous  Fathers  of  Confederation  re- 
versed the  American  system.  All  power  not  specifically 
delegated  to  the  provinces  was  supposed  to  rest  with 
the  Dominion.  Only  strictly  local  aif airs  were  left  with 
the  provinces.  Trade,  commerce,  justice,  lands,  ag- 
riculture, labor,  marriage  laws,  waterways,  harbors, 
railways  were  specifically  put  under  Dominion  control. 


IV 


Now,  stand  back  and  contemplate  the  situation  con- 
fronting the  new  federation : 

Canada's  population  was  less  than  half  the  present 
population  of  the  state  of  New  York;  not  four  mil- 
lion. That  population  was  scattered  over  an  area  the 
size  of  Europe.*  To  render  the  situation  doubly  dark 
and  doubtful  the  United  States  had  just  entered  on 
her  career  of  high  tariff.  That  high  tariff  barred 
Canadian  produce  out.  There  was  only  one  inter- 
mittent and  unsatisfactory  steamer  service  across  the 
Atlantic.     There  was  none  at  all  across  the  Pacific. 


*  Canada's  area  is  3,750,000  square  miles.    The  area  of  Eu- 
rope is  3,797,410  square  miles. 


NATIONAL    CONSCIOUSNESS  13 

British  Columbians  trusted  to  windjammers  round  the 
Horn.  Of  railroads  binding  East  to  West  there 
was  none.  A  canal  system  had  been  begun  from  the 
lakes  and  the  Ottawa  to  the  St.  Lawrence,  but  this 
was  a  measure  more  of  national  defense  than  com- 
merce. Crops  were  abundant,  but  where  could  they 
be  sold  ?  I  have  heard  relatives  tell  how  wheat  in  those 
days  sold  down  to  forty  cents,  and  oats  to  twenty 
cents,  and  potatoes  to  fifteen  cents,  and  fine  cattle  to 
forty  dollars,  and  finest  horses  to  fifty  dollars  and 
seventy-five  dollars.  Fathers  of  farmers  who  to-day 
clear  their  three  thousand  dollars  and  four  thousand 
dollars  a  year  could  not  clear  one  hundred  dollars  a 
year.  Commerce  was  absolutely  stagnant.  Canada 
was  a  federation,  but  a  federation  of  what  ?  Poverty- 
stricken,  isolated  provinces.  Not  in  bravado,  not  in 
flamboyant  self-confidence,  rebuffed  of  all  chance  to 
trade  with  the  United  States,  the  new  Dominion  hum- 
bly set  herself  to  build  the  foundations  of  a  nation. 
She  did  not  know  whether  she  could  do  what  she  had 
set  herself  to  do ;  but  she  began  with  that  same  dogged 
idealism  and  faith  in  the  future  which  had  buoyed 
up  her  first  settlers ;  and  there  were  dark  days  during 
her  long  hard  task,  when  the  whiff  of  an  adverse  wind 
would  have  thrown  her  into  national  bankruptcy — 
that  winter,  for  instance,  when  the  Canadian  Pacific 
had  no  money  to  go  on  building  and  the  Canadian 
government  refused  to  extend  aid.     Had  the  Kiel 


14.     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

Rebellion  of  '85  not  compelled  the  Dominion  govern- 
ment to  extend  aid  so  that  the  line  would  be  ready  for 
the  troops  every  bank  in  Canada  would  have  collapsed, 
and  national  credit  would  have  been  impaired  for  fifty 
years. 

Meanwhile,  a  country  of  less  than  four  million  peo- 
ple set  itself  to  link  British  Columbia  with  Montreal, 
and  Montreal  with  Halifax,  and  Ottawa  with  Detroit, 
and  the  Great  Lakes  with  the  sea.  The  story  is  too 
long  to  be  related  in  detail,  but  on  canals  alone  Canada 
has  spent  a  hundred  millions.  Including  stocks, 
bonds,  funded  debt  and  debenture  stock,  the  Dominion 
railways  have  a  capital  of  $1,369,992,574;  and  the 
country  that  had  not  a  foot  of  railroads,  when  the 
patriots  fought  the  Family  Compact,  to-day  possesses 
twenty-nine  thousand  miles  of  trackage,*  three  trans- 
continental systems  of  railroads  and  threescore  lines 
touching  the  boundary,  f  Five  times  more  tonnage 
passes  through  the  Canadian  Soo  Canal  than  is  ex- 
pected for  Panama  or  has  passed  through  Suez;  but 
consider  the  burden  of  this  development  on  a  people 
whose  farmers  were  scarcely  clearing  one  hundred  dol- 


*  Canada's  railway  mileage  at  the  end  of  1913  was  29,303.53. 

The  land  grants  to  Canadian  railroads,  Dominion  and  pro- 
vincial, stand  55,256,429  acres.  Cash  subsidies  to  railroads  in 
Canada  up  to  June  30,  1913,  stand  thus :  from  the  Dominion, 
$163,251,469.42;  from  the  provinces,  $36,500,015.16;  from  the 
municipalities,  $18,078,673.60. 

t  The  tonnage  through  both  Canadian  and  U.  S.  canals  at 
the  "Soo"  in  1913  was  72,472,676,  of  which  39,664,874  went 
through  the  Canadian  canal. 


NATIONAL    CONSCIOUSNESS  16 

lars  a  year.  It  is  putting  it  mildly  to  say  that  during 
these  dark  days  property  depreciated  two-thirds  in 
value.  Land  companies  that  had  loaned  up  to  two- 
thirds  the  value  of  farm  property  found  themselves 
saddled  with  farms  which  could  not  be  sold  for  half 
they  had  advanced  on  the  loan. 

Three  times  within  the  memory  of  the  living  gen- 
eration Canadian  delegates  sought  trade  concessions  in 
Washington ;  and  three  times  they  came  back  rebuffed, 
with  but  a  grimmer  determination  to  work  out  Can- 
ada's own  destiny.  Is  it  any  wonder,  when  the  fourth 
time  came  and  Canada  was  offered  reciprocity  that  she 
voted  it  down  .'* 

During  the  twenty  dark  years  Canada  lost  to  the 
United  States  one-fourth  her  native  population.* 
During  the  last  ten  years  she  has  drawn  back  to  her 
home  acres  not  only  many  of  her  expatriated  native 
born  but  almost  two  million  Americans.  In  ten  years 
her  population  has  almost  doubled.  Uncle  Sam  has 
boasted  his  four  billion  yearly  foreign  trade  from  At- 
lantic ports.     Canada  with  a  population  only  one- 


♦  The  U.  S.  Census  reports  place  the  number  of  Canadians 
in  the  United  States  at  one  and  a  quarter  million ;  but  this  is 
obviously  far  below  the  mark.  Canada's  loss  of  people  shows 
that.  For  instance,  from  1898  to  1908,  Canada  was  receiving 
immigrants  at  a  rate  exceeding  200,000  a  year,  yet  the  census 
for  this  decade  showed  a  gain  of  only  a  million.  It  was  not 
till  1914  her  census  showed  a  gain  of  two  million  for  ten  years. 
Her  immigrants  either  went  back  or  drifted  over  the  line. 
Port  figures  show  that  few  went  back  to  Europe. 


16     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

twelfth  Uncle  Sam's  to-day  has  a  foreign  trade  of 
almost  a  billion. 

V 

Take  another  look  at  Canada's  area !  All  of  Ger- 
many and  Austria  spread  over  Eastern  Canada  would 
still  leave  an  area  uncovered  in  the  East  bigger  than 
the  German  Empire.  England  spread  out  flat  would 
just  cover  the  maritime  provinces.  Quebec  stands  a 
third  bigger  than  Germany,  Ontario  a  third  bigger 
than  France;  and  you  still  have  a  western  world  as 
large  again  as  the  East.  Spread  the  British  Isles  flat, 
they  would  barely  cover  Manitoba.  France  and  Ger- 
many would  not  equal  Saskatchewan  and  Alberta ;  and 
two  Germanies  would  not  cover  British  Columbia — 
leaving  undefined  Yukon  and  MacKenzie  River  and 
Peace  River  and  the  hinterland  of  Hudson  Bay,  an 
area  equal  to  European  Russia.  If  areas  in  Canada 
had  the  same  population  as  areas  in  Europe,  the  Do- 
minion would  be  supporting  four  hundred  million 
people. 

It  would  be  assuming  too  much  stoicism  to  say  that 
Canadians  are  not  conscious  of  a  great  destiny.  For 
years  they  stuck  so  closely  to  their  nation-building 
that  they  had  no  time  to  stand  back  and  view  the  size 
of  the  edifice  of  their  own  structure,  but  all  that  is  dif- 
ferent to-day.  When  four  hundred  thousand  people 
a  year  flock  to  the  Dominion  to  cast  in  their  lot  with 


NATIONAL    CONSCIOUSNESS  17 

Canadians,  there  is  testimony  of  worth.  Canadians 
know  their  destiny  is  upon  them,  whatever  it  may  be ; 
and  they  are  meeting  the  challenge  half-way  with 
faces  to  the  front.  In  the  words  of  Sir  Wilfred 
Laurier,  they  know  that  "the  Twentieth  Century  is 
Canada's."  What  will  they  do  with  it?  What  are 
their  aims  and  desires  as  a  people?  Will  the  same 
ideals  light  the  path  to  the  fore  as  have  illumined  the 
long  hard  way  in  the  past?  Will  Canada  absorb  into 
her  national  life  the  people  who  are  coming  to  her,  or 
will  they  absorb  her? 


CHAPTER  II 


FOUNDATION   FOE   HOPE 


Canada  at  the  opening  of  the  twentieth  century 
has  the  same  population  as  the  United  States  at  the 
opening  of  the  nineteenth  century.*  Has  the  Dominion 
any  material  justification  for  her  high  hopes  of  a 
world  destiny?  Switzerland  possesses  national  con- 
sciousness to  an  acute  degree.  Yet  Switzerland  re- 
mains a  little  people.  What  ground  has  Canada  for 
measuring  her  strength  with  the  nations  of  the  world.'' 
Having  remained  almost  stationary  in  her  national 
progress  from  1759  to  1859,  what  reason  has  she  to 
anticipate  a  progress  as  swift  and  world-embracing  as 
that  which  forced  the  United  States  to  the  very  fore- 
front of  world  powers  ?  It  takes  something  more  than 
high  hopes  to  build  empire.  Has  Canada  a  founda- 
tion beneath  her  high  hopes?  No  nation  ever  had  a 
more  passionate  patriotism  than  Ireland.    Yet  Ireland 


*In  1800,  the  United  States  population  was  5,308,483;  in 
1901,  the  Canadian  population  was  5,371,315. 

18 


FOUNDATION   FOR   HOPE  19 

has  lost  her  population  and  retrogressed.*    Why  will 
the  same  fate  not  halt  and  impede  Canada  ? 

It  may  be  acknowledged  here  that  Canadians  have 
no  answers  for  such  questions  and  short  shift  for  the 
questioner.  They  are  too  busy  making  history  to  talk 
about  it.  It  is  only  the  woman  insecure  of  her  social 
position  who  prates  about  it.  It  is  only  the  nation  un- 
*  certain  of  herself  that  bolsters  a  fact  with  an  argu- 
ment. Canada  is  too  busy  with  facts  for  any  flamboy- 
ant arguments.  It  is  an  even  wager  that  if  you  ask 
the  average  well-informed  business  man  in  Canada 
how  many  miles  of  railways  the  Dominion  has,  he  will 
answer  on  the  dot  "almost  thirty  thousand."  But  if 
you  ask  if  he  knows  that  Germany,  for  instance,  with 
nine  times  denser  population  has  barely  twice  as  much 
trackage — no,  your  Canadian  business  man  doesn't 
know  it.  He  is  too  busy  building  his  own  railroads  to 
care  much  what  other  nations  are  doing  with  theirs. 
Likewise  of  the  country's  trade  increasing  faster  al- 
most than  the  Dominion  can  handle  it.  He  knows  that 
imports  have  increased  one  hundred  and  sixty-three 
per  cent,  in  ten  years,  and  that  exports  have  increased 
almost  fifty  per  cent. ;  but  he  doesn't  realize  in  the  least 
that  the  Dominion  with  seven  million  people  has  one- 
fourth  as  large  a  foreign  trade  as  the  United  States 


*  Ireland  lost  one-half  her  population  from  1840  to  1900. 
Her  population  dropped  in  round  numbers  from  eight  millions 
to  four  millions. 


20     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

with  a  hundred  million  people.*  He  knows  that  immi- 
gration has  in  ten  years  j  umped  from  49,000  a  year  to 
402,000;  but  does  he  take  in  what  it  means  that 
his  country  with  only  five  million  native  born  is 
being  called  on  to  absorb  yearly  a  third  as  many 
immigrants  as  the  United  States  with  eighty  million 
native  bornPf  He  has  been  so  busy  handling  the 
rush  of  prosperity  that  has  come  in  on  him  like  a 
tidal  wave  that  he  has  not  had  time  to  pause  over 
the  problems  of  this  new  destiny — the  fact,  for  in- 
stance, that  in  two  more  decades  the  newcomers  will 
outnumber  the  native  born. 


II 


Unless  the  edifice  be  top  heavy,  beneath  it  all  must 
be  the  rock  bottom  of  fact.  Beneath  the  tide  is  the 
pull  of  some  eternal  law.  What  facts  is  Canada  build- 
ing her  future  on?  What  pull  is  beneath  the  tide  of 
four  hundred  thousand  homeseekers  a  year?  What 
has  doubled  population  and  almost  doubled  foreign 
trade  ? 

It  is  almost  a  truism  that  the  farther  north  the 
land,  the  greater  the  fertility,  if  there  be  any  fertility 


♦Total  foreign  trade  of  Canada,  1912,  $1,085,264,000;  of 
United  States,  $4,538,702,000. 

t  This  presupposes  immigration  to  the  United  States  at  a 
million  and  a  quarter,  as  before  the  war. 


FOUNDATION    FOR    HOPE  21 

at  all.  There  is  first  the  supply  of  unfailing  moisture, 
with  a  yearly  subsoiling  of  humus  unknown  to  arid 
lands.  Canada  is  super-sensitive  about  her  winter  cli- 
mate— the  depth  and  intensity  of  the  frost,  the  length 
and  rigor  of  her  winters;  but  she  need  not  be.  It 
should  be  cause  of  gratitude.  Frost  penetrating  the 
ground  from  five  to  twelve  feet — as  it  does  in  the 
Northwest — guarantees  a  subterranean  root  irriga- 
tion that  never  fails.  Heavy  snow — let  us  acknowledge 
frankly  snow  sometimes  banks  western  streets  the 
height  of  a  man — means  a  heavy  supply  of  moisture 
both  in  thaw  and  rain.  There  is  second  the  long  sun- 
light. An  earth  tilted  on  its  axis  toward  the  sun  six 
months  of  the  year  gives  the  North  a  sunlight  that  is 
longer  the  farther  north  you  go.  When  the  sun  sets 
at  seven  to  eight  in  New  York,  it  sets  at  eight  to  nine 
in  Winnipeg,  and  nine  to  ten  in  Athabasca,  and  only 
for  a  few  hours  at  all  still  farther  north.  It  is  the 
long  sunlight  that  gives  the  fruit  of  Niagara  and 
Quebec  and  Annapolis  its  "fameuse"  quality;  just  as 
it  is  the  sunlight  that  gives  western  fruit  its  finest 
coloring,  the  higher  up  the  plateau  it  is  grown.  It  is 
the  long  sunlight  that  gives  Number  One  Hard  Wheat 
its  white  fine  quality  so  indispensable  to  the  millers. 
So  of  barley  and  vegetables  and  small  fruits  and  all 
that  can  be  grown  in  the  short  season  of  the  North. 
What  the  season  lacks  in  length  it  gains  in  intensity 
of  sunlight.     Four  months  of  twenty-hour  sunlight 


22     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

produce  better  growth  in  some  products  than  eight 
months  of  shorter  sunlight. 

These  two  advantages  of  moisture  and  sunlight, 
Canada  possesses.*  What  else  has  she?  It  doesn't 
mean  much  to  say  that  Canada  equals  Europe  in  area 
and  that  you  could  spread  Germany  and  France  and 
Austria  and  Great  Britain  over  the  Dominion's  map 
and  still  have  an  area  uncovered  equal  to  European 
Russia.  Nor  does  it  mean  much  more  to  say  that  in 
Canada  you  can  find  the  climate  of  a  Switzerland  in 
the  Canadian  Rockies,  of  Italy  in  British  Columbia, 
of  England  in  the  maritime  provinces  and  of  Russia 
in  the  Northwest.  Areas  are  so  great  and  diverse 
that  you  have  to  examine  them  in  groups  to  realize 
what  basis  of  fact  Canada  builds  from. 

Girt  almost  round  by  the  sea  are  the  maritime  prov- 
inces— ^Nova  Scotia,  Prince  Edward  Island,  New 
Brunswick — in  area  within  sixty-seven  square  miles  of 
the  same  size  as  England,  and  in  climate  not  unlike  the 
home  land.f     Your  impression  of  their  inhabitants  is 


*  Speaking  generally,  there  are  few  sections  of  the  North- 
west where  the  average  rainfall  is  scanty. 

t  The  areas  of  all  the  Canadian  provinces  except  the  mari- 
time ones  have  been  extended  in  recent  years — Quebec  to  in- 
clude Labrador — except  the  East  Shore,  which  is  under  New- 
foundland ;  Ontario  to  James  Bay ;  Manitoba  and  Saskatche- 
wan to  Hudson  Bay;  Alberta  to  MacKenzie  River.  Northern 
British  Columbia  is  not  yet  surveyed,  which  explains  why  its 
northern  area  is  largely  a  matter  of  guess — closest  estimates 
placing  the  whole  province  including  Yukon  as  twice  Ger- 
many; without  Yukon  as  about  one  and  two-thirds  the  area 
of  Germany ;  but  this  is  rough  guesswork. 


FOUNDATION    FOR    HOPE  23 

of  a  quiescent,  romantic,  pastoral  and  sea-faring  peo- 
ple— sprung  from  the  same  stock  as  the  liberty-seek- 
ers of  New  England,  untouched  by  the  mad  unrest  of 
modern  days,  conservative  as  bed-rock,  but  with  an 
eye  to  the  frugal  main  chance  and  a  way  of  making 
good  quietly.  They  do  not  talk  about  the  simple  life 
in  the  maritime  provinces  because  they  have  always 
lived  it,  and  the  land  is  famed  for  its  diet  of  codfish 
and  Its  men  of  brains.  Frugal,  simple,  reposeful  liv- 
ing— the  kind  of  living  that  takes  time  to  think — ^has 
sent  out  from  the  maritime  provinces  more  leaders  of 
thought  than  any  other  area  of  Canada.  It  is  a  land 
that  leaves  a  dreamy  memory  with  you  of  sunset  lying 
gold  on  the  Bras  d'  Or  Lakes,  of  cattle  belly-deep  in 
pasture,  of  apple  farms  where  fragrance  of  fruit  and 
blossoms  seem  to  scent  the  very  atmosphere,  of  fisher- 
men rocking  in  their  smacks,  of  great  ships  plowing 
up  and  down  to  sea.  You  know  there  are  great  coal 
mines  to  the  east  and  great  timber  limits  to  the  north ; 
you  may  even  smell  the  imprisoned  fragrance  of  the 
yellowing  lumber  being  loaded  for  export,  but  it  is  as 
the  land  of  winter  ports  and  of  seamen  for  the  navy 
that  you  will  remember  the  maritime  provinces  as  fac- 
tors in  Canada's  destiny. 

When  gold  was  discovered  in  the  Yukon  and  a  hun- 
dred million  dollars  in  gold  came  out  in  ten  years,  the 
world  went  mad.  Yet  Canada  yearly  mines  from  the 
silver  quarries  of  the  sea  a  harvest  of  thirty-four  mil- 


24     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

lion  dollars,  and  of  that  amount,  fifteen  million  dollars 
comes  from  the  maritime  provinces.*  Conservationists 
have  sung  their  song  in  vain  if  the  world  does  not 
know  that  the  fisheries  of  the  United  States  have  been 
ruthlessly  depleted,  but  here  is  a  land  the  area  of  Eng- 
land whose  fisheries  have  increased  in  value  one  hun- 
dred per  cent,  in  ten  years.  It  is  not,  however,  as  the 
great  resource  of  fisheries  that  the  maritime  provinces 
must  play  their  part  in  Canada's  destiny.  It  is  as 
the  nursery  of  seamen  for  a  marine  power.  No  south- 
ern nation,  with  the  exception  of  Carthage,  has  ever 
dominated  the  sea;  partly  for  the  simple  reason  that 
the  best  fisheries  are  always  located  in  temperate  zones, 
where  the  glacial  silt  of  the  icebergs  feeds  the  finny 
hordes  with  minute  infusoria;  and  the  fisherman's 
smack — ^the  dory  that  rocks  to  the  waves  like  a  cockle- 
shell, with  meal  of  pork  and  beans  cooking  above  a 
chip  fire  on  stones  in  the  bottom  of  the  boat,  and 
rough  grimed  fellows  singing  chanties  to  the  rhythm 
of  the  sea — the  fisherman's  smack  is  the  nursery  of  the 
world's  proudest  merchant  marines  and  most  powerful 
navies.  Japan  knows  this,  and  encourages  her  fisher- 
men by  bounties  and  passage  money  to  spread  all  over 
the  world,  and  Japanese  to-day  operate  practically  all 
the  fisheries  of  the  Pacific.  England  knows  this  and 
in  the  North  Sea  and  off  Newfoundland  protects  her 
fishermen  and  draws  from  their  ranks  her  seamen- 


*  Canada's  fisheries  for  1912  yielded  $34,667,872. 


FOUNDATION    FOR    HOPE  25 

Japan  dominates  seventy-two  per  cent,  of  the  com- 
merce of  the  Pacific,  not  through  chance,  but  through 
her  merchant  marine  built  up  from  rough  grimed  fel- 
lows who  quarry  the  silver  mines  of  the  sea.  England 
dominates  the  Seven  Seas  of  the  world,  not  through 
her  superiority  man  to  man  against  other  races,  but 
through  her  merchant  marine,  carrying  the  commerce 
of  the  world,  built  up  from  simple  fisher  folk  hauling 
in  the  net  or  paying  out  the  line  through  icy  salty 
spray  above  tempestuous  seas.  No  power  yet  domi- 
nates the  seas  of  the  New  World.  The  foreign  com- 
merce of  the  New  World  up  to  the  time  of  the  great 
war  was  carried  by  British,  German  and  Japanese 
ships.  Canada  has  the  steel,  the  coal,  the  timber,  the 
nursery  for  seamen.  Will  she  become  a  marine  power 
in  the  New  World?  It  is  one  of  her  dreams.  It  is 
also  one  of  England's  dreams.  No  country  subsidizes 
her  merchant  liners  more  heavily  than  Canada* — in 
striking  contrast  with  the  parsimonious  policy  of  the 
United  States.  It  is  Canada's  policy  of  ship  subsidies 
that  has  established  regular  merchant  liners — all  liable 
to  service  as  Admiralty  ships — ^to  Australia,  to  China, 
to  Japan  and  to  every  harbor  on  the  Atlantic. 

Whether  heavy  subsidies  to  large  liners  will  effect 
as  much  for  a  merchant  marine  for  Canada  as  numer- 
ous small  subsidies  to  small  lines  remains  to  be  seen. 


*  Canada's  subsidies  to  steamships  vary  from  year  to  year, 
but  I  do  not  think  any  year  has  much  exceeded  two  millions. 


26    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

The  development  of  seamen  from  her  fisheries  is  one 
of  the  dreams  she  must  work  out  in  her  destiny,  and 
that  leads  one  to  the  one  great  disadvantage  under 
which  Canada  rests  as  a  marine  power.  She  lacks  win- 
ter harbors  on  the  Atlantic  accessible  to  her  great 
western  domain,  whence  comes  the  bulk  of  her  com- 
merce for  export.  True,  the  maritime  provinces  af- 
ford those  harbors — Saint  John  and  Halifax.  A 
dozen  other  points,  if  need  were,  could  be  utilized  in 
the  maritime  provinces  as  winter  harbors;  but  take 
a  look  at  the  map!  The  maritime  provinces  are  the 
longest  possible  spiral  distance  from  the  rest  of  Can- 
ada. They  necessitate  a  rail  haul  of  from  two  to 
three  thousand  miles  from  the  west.  What  gives 
Galveston,  New  Orleans,  Baltimore,  Buffalo  pre- 
eminence as  harbors?  Their  nearness  to  the  centers 
of  commerce — ^their  position  far  inland  of  the  conti- 
nent, cutting  rail  haul  by  half  and  quarter  from  the 
plains.  Montreal  has  this  advantage  of  being  far 
inland;  but  from  November  to  May  Montreal  is 
closed ;  and  Canadian  commerce  must  come  out  by 
way  of  American  lines,  or  pay  the  long  haul  down  to 
the  maritime  provinces.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that 
this  disadvantage  is  one  of  the  factors  forcing  the 
West  to  find  outlet  by  Hudson  Bay — where  harbors 
are  also  closed  by  the  ice  but  are  only  four  hundred 
miles  from  the  wheat  plains.     There  can  also  be  no 


FOUNDATION    FOR    HOPE  27 

doubt  that  the  opening  of  Panama  will  draw  much 
western  commerce  to  Europe  by  way  of  the  Pacific. 


in 


When  one  comes  to  consider  Quebec  under  its  new 
boundaries,  one  is  contemplating  an  empire  three 
times  larger  than  Germany,  supporting  a  population 
not  so  large  as  Berlin.*  It  is  the  seat  of  the  old 
French  Empire,  the  land  of  the  idealists  who  came  to 
propagate  the  Faith  and  succeeded  in  exploring  three- 
quarters  of  the  continent,  with  canoes  pointed  ever 
up-stream  in  quest  of  beaver.  All  the  characteristics 
of  the  Old  Empire  are  in  Quebec  to-day.  Quebec  is 
French  to  the  core,  not  in  loyalty  to  republican 
France,  but  in  loyalty  to  the  religious  ideals  which 
the  founders  brought  to  the  banks  of  the  St.  Lawrence 
three  centuries  ago.  Church  spire,  convent  walls, 
religious  foundations  occupy  the  most  prominent  site 
in  every  city  and  town  and  hamlet  of  Quebec.  From 
Tadousac  to  Montreal,  from  Labrador  to  Maine  or 
New  Hampshire,  you  can  follow  the  thread  of  every 
river  in  Quebec  by  the  glitter  of  the  church  spires 
round  which  nestle  the  hamlets.  No  matter  how  poor 
the  hamlet,  no  matter  how  remote  the  hills  which  slope 
wooded  down  to  some  blue  lake,  there  stand  the  village 
church  with  its  cross  on  the  spire,  the  whitewashed 


♦  This  is  including  Labrador. 


28     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

house  of  the  cure,  the  whitewashed  square  dormer- 
windowed  school. 

Outside  Quebec  City  and  Montreal,  Quebec  is  the 
most  reposeful  region  in  all  America.  What  matter 
wars  and  rumors  of  wars  to  these  habitants  living  un- 
der guidance  of  the  cure,  as  their  ancestors  lived  two 
hundred  years  ago?  They  pay  their  tithes.  They 
attend  mass.  At  birth,  marriage  and  death — the  cure 
Is  their  guide  and  friend.  He  teaches  them  in  their 
schools.  He  advises  them  in  their  family  affairs.  He 
counsels  them  in  their  business.  At  times  he  even 
dictates  their  politics ;  but  when  you  remember  that 
French  is  the  language  spoken,  that  primary  educa- 
tion is  of  the  slimmest,  though  all  doors  are  open  for 
a  promising  pupil  to  advance,  you  wonder  whether 
constant  tutelage  of  a  benevolent  church  may  not  be 
a  good  thing  In  a  chaotic,  confused  and  restless  age. 
The  habitant  lives  on  his  little  long  narrow  strip  of  a 
farm  running  back  from  the  river  front.  He  fishes  a 
little.  He  works  on  the  river  and  in  the  lumber  camps 
of  the  Back  Country.  He  raises  a  little  tobacco,  hay,  a 
pig,  a  cow,  a  little  horse  and  a  family  of  from  ten  to 
twenty.  When  the  daughters  marry — as  they  are  en- 
couraged to  do  at  the  earliest  possible  age — the  farm 
is  subdivided  among  the  sons ;  and  when  it  will  sub- 
divide no  longer,  there  is  a  migration  to  the  Back 
Country,  or  to  a  French  settlement  in  the  Northwest, 
where  another  cure  will  shepherd  the  flock;  and  the 


FOUNDATION    FOR    HOPE  29 

habitant,  blessed  at  his  birth  and  blessed  at  his  mar- 
riage, is  usually  blessed  at  his  death  at  the  ripe  age 
of  ninety  or  a  hundred.  It  is  a  simple  and  on  the 
whole  a  very  happy,  if  not  progressive,  life.  Some 
years  ago,  when  hard  times  prevailed  in  Canada  and 
the  manufacturing  cities  of  New  England  offered 
what  seemed  big  wages  to  habitants,  who  considered 
themselves  rich  on  one  hundred  dollars  a  year — a 
great  migration  took  place  across  the  border;  but  it 
was  not  a  happy  move  for  these  simple  children  of 
the  soil.  They  missed  the  shepherding  of  their  be- 
loved cure,  and  the  movement  has  almost  stopped. 
Also  you  find  Jean  Ba'tiste  in  the  redwoods  of  Cali- 
fornia as  lumber-jack,  or  plying  a  canoe  on  Mac- 
Kenzle  River.  The  best  fur-traders  of  the  North 
to-day  are  half-breeds  with  a  strain  of  French  Cana- 
dian blood. 

If  you  take  a  look  at  the  map  of  Quebec  under  its 
new  boundaries  up  into  Labrador — it  seems  absurd  to 
call  a  region  three  times  the  area  of  Germany  "a 
province" — you  will  see  that  only  the  fringe  of  the 
river  fronts  has  been  peopled.  This  is  owing  to  the 
old  system  of  parceling  out  the  land  in  mile  strips 
back  from  the  river — a  system  that  antedated  the 
railroads,  when  every  man's  train  was  a  paddle  and 
the  waterfront.  Beyond,  back  up  from  the  rivers,  lies 
literally  a  no-man's-land  of  furs  plentiful  as  of  old,  of 
timber  of  which  only  the  edge  has  been  slashed,  of 


so     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

water  power  unestimated  and  of  mineral  resources 
only  guessed.  It  seems  incredible  at  this  late  date 
that  you  can  count  on  one  hand  the  number  of  men 
who  have  ascended  the  rivers  of  Quebec  and  de- 
scended the  rivers  of  Labrador  to  Hudson  Bay.  The 
forest  area  is  estimated  at  one  hundred  and  twenty 
million  acres ;  but  that  is  only  a  guess.  The  area  of 
pulp  wood  is  boundless. 

Along  the  St.  Lawrence,  south  of  the  St.  Lawrence 
and  around  the  great  cities  come  touches  of  the  mod- 
ern— elaborate  stock  farms,  great  factories,  mag- 
nificent orchards,  huge  sawmills.  The  progress  of 
Montreal  and  the  City  of  Quebec  is  so  intimately  in- 
volved with  the  navigation  of  the  St.  Lawrence  route 
and  the  development  of  railroads  that  it  must  be  dealt 
with  separately;  but  it  may  be  said  here  that  nearly 
all  the  old  seigneurial  tenures — Crown  grants  of 
estates  to  the  nobility  of  New  France — ^have  passed 
to  alien  hands.  The  system  itself,  the  last  relic  of 
feudal  tenure  in  Canada,  was  abolished  by  Canadian 
law.  What,  then,  is  the  aim  of  Quebec  as  a  factor  in 
Canada's  destiny?  It  may  be  said  perfectly  frankly 
that  with  the  exception  of  such  enlightened  men  as 
Laurier,  Quebec  does  not  concern  herself  with  Canada's 
destiny.  In  a  war  with  France,  yes,  she  would  give 
of  her  sons  and  her  blood;  in  a  war  against  France, 
not  so  sure.  "Why  are  you  loyal  ?"  I  asked  a  splendid 
scholarly  churchman  of  the  old  regime — a  man  whose 


FOUNDATION    FOR    HOPE  31 

works  have  been  quoted  by  Parkman.  "Because,"  he 
answered  slowly,  "because — you — English — leave  us 
— alone  to  work  out  our  hopes."  "What  are  those 
hopes?"  I  asked.  He  waved  his  hand  toward  the  win- 
dow— church  spires  and  yet  more  spires  far  as  we 
could  see  down  the  St.  Lawrence — another  New  France 
conserving  the  religious  ideals  that  had  been  crushed 
by  the  republicanism  of  the  old  land.  Let  it  be  stated 
without  a  shadow  of  doubt — Quebec  never  has  had  and 
never  will  have  the  faintest  idea  of  secession.  Her 
religious  freedom  is  too  well  guaranteed  under  the 
present  regime  for  her  to  risk  change  under  an  un- 
tried order  of  independence  or  annexation.  The 
church  wants  Quebec  exactly  as  she  is — to  work  out 
her  destiny  of  a  new  and  regenerate  France  on  the 
banks  of  the  St.  Lawrence. 

A  certain  section  of  the  French  oppose  Canada  em- 
broiling herself  in  European  wars.  They  do  this  con- 
scientiously and  not  as  a  political  trick  to  attract  the 
votes  of  the  ultramontane  French.  One  of  the  most 
brilliant  supporters  Sir  Wilfred  Laurier  ever  had 
flung  his  chances  of  a  Cabinet  place  to  the  winds  in 
opposing  Canada's  participation  in  the  Boer  War. 
He  not  only  flung  his  chances  to  the  winds,  but  he 
ruined  himself  financially  and  was  read  out  of  the 
party.  The  motive  behind  this  opposition  to  Canada's 
participations  in  the  Imperial  wars  is,  perhaps,  three- 
fold.    French  Canada  has  never  forgotten  that  she 


32     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

was  conquered.  True,  she  is  better  off,  enjoys  greater 
religious  liberty,  greater  material  prosperity,  greater 
political  freedom  than  under  the  old  regime;  but  she 
remembers  that  French  prestige  fell  before  English 
prestige  on  the  Plains  of  Abraham.  The  second  mo- 
tive is  an  unconscious  feeling  of  detachment  from 
British  Imperial  affairs.  Why  should  French  Canada 
embroil  herself  and  give  of  her  blood  and  means  for  a 
race  alien  to  herself  in  speech  and  religion?  The 
Monroe  Doctrine  forever  defends  Canada  from  seizure 
by  European  power.  Why  not  rest  under  that  de- 
fense and  build  up  a  purely  Canadian  power?  The 
third  motive  is  almost  subconscious.  What  if  a  Euro- 
pean war  should  involve  French-Catholic  Canada  on 
the  side  of  Protestant  England  against  French-Catho- 
lic France,  or  even  Catholic  Italy?  Quebec  feels  her- 
self a  part  of  Canada  but  not  of  the  British  Empire ; 
and  it  is  a  great  question  how  much  Laurier's  support 
of  the  British  in  the  Boer  War  had  to  do  with  that 
partial  defection  of  Quebec  which  ultimately  defeated 
him  on  Reciprocity ;  for  if  there  is  one  thing  the  de- 
vout son  of  the  church  fears  more  than  embroilment 
in  European  war,  it  is  coming  under  the  republicaniz- 
ing  influence  of  the  United  States.  Under  Canadian 
law  the  favored  status  of  the  church  is  guaranteed. 
Under  American  law  the  church  would  be  on  the  same 
footing  as  all  other  denominations. 


FOUNDATION    FOR    HOPE  83 

IV 

When  one  comes  to  Ontario,  one  Is  dealing  with  the 
kitchen  garden  of  the  Dominion — In  summer  a  land 
of  placid  sky-blue  lakes,  and  amber-colored  wooded 
rivers,  and  trim,  almost  garden-like  farms,  and  heav- 
ily laden  orchards,  and  thriving  cities  beginning  to 
smoke  under  the  pall  of  the  increasing  and  almost 
universal  factory.  Under  its  old  boundaries  Ontario 
stood  just  eighteen  thousand  square  miles  larger  than 
France.  Under  Its  new  boundaries  extending  to  Hud- 
son Bay,  Ontario  measures  almost  twice  the  area  of 
France.  France  supports  a  population  of  nearly 
forty  millions ;  Ontario,  of  barely  two  and  a  half  mil- 
lions. Both  Ontario  and  France  are  equally  fertile 
and  equally  diversified  In  fertility.  Along  the  lakes 
and  clustered  round  Niagara  is  the  great  fruit  region 
— vineyards  and  apple  orchards  that  are  gardens  of 
perfection.  North  of  the  lakes  is  a  mixed  farm  re- 
gion. Parallel  with  the  latitude  skirting  Georgian 
Bay  begins  the  Great  Clay  belt,  an  area  of  heavily 
forested  lands  about  seven  hundred  miles  north  to 
south  and  almost  a  thousand  diagonally  east  to  west. 
On  its  southern  edge  this  hinterland,  which  forms 
the  watershed  between  Hudson  Bay  and  the  St.  Law- 
rence, seems  to  be  rock -bound  and  iron-capped.  For 
years  travelers  across  the  continent  must  have  looked 
through  the  car  windows  across  this  landscape  of 


S4>     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

windfall  and  fire  as  a  picture  of  desolation.  Surely, 
*'here  was  nothing,"  as  some  of  the  first  explorers 
said  when  they  viewed  Canada  from  Labrador;  but 
pause ;  not  so  fast !  Here  lay,  if  nothing  else,  an  area 
of  timber  limits  seven  hundred  by  one  thousand  miles ; 
and  as  the  timber  burned  off  curious  mineral  outcrop- 
pings  were  observed.  When  the  railroad  was  graded 
through  what  is  now  known  as  Sudbury,  there  was  a 
report  of  a  great  find  of  copper.  Expert  after  expert 
examined  it,  and  company  after  company  forfeited 
options  and  refused  to  bond  it.  Finally  a  shipment 
was  sent  out  to  a  smelter  across  the  border.  The 
so-called  "copper"  was  pronounced  "nickel" — the 
greatest  deposit  of  the  metal  needed  for  armor  plat- 
ing known  In  the  world.  In  fact,  only  one  other  mine 
cpuld  compete  against  the  Sudbury  nickel  beds — the 
French  mines  of  New  Caledonia.  Here  was  some- 
thing, surely,  in  this  rock-bound  Iron  region  of  deso- 
lation, which  passing  travelers  had  pronounced  worth- 
less. 

The  discovery  of  silver  at  Cobalt  came  by  an  almost 
similar  chance.  Grading  an  extension  of  a  North 
Ontario  railroad  projected  purely  for  the  sake  of 
prospective  settlers,  workmen  came  on  surface  depos- 
its of  "rose"  silver — almost  pure  metal,  some  of  It; 
and  there  resulted  such  a  mining  boom  and  series  of 
quick  fortunes  as  had  made  Klondike  famous.  And 
Cobalt  and  Sudbury  are  at  only  the  southern  edge  of 


FOUNDATION    FOR   HOPE  85 

the  unexplored  hinterland  of  Ontario.  Old  records 
of  the  French  regime,  daily  journals  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Company  fur-traders,  repeatedly  refer  to  well- 
known  mines  between  Lake  Superior  and  James  Bay ; 
but  fur-traders  discouraged  mining;  and  this  region 
is  less  known  to-day  than  when  coureur  de  hois  and 
voyageur  threaded  river  and  lake  and  leafy  wilder- 
ness. Ontario,  like  Quebec,  is  only  on  the  outer  edge 
of  realizing  her  own  wealth. 


We  sometimes  speak  as  though  Canada  had  had  her 
boom  and  it  was  all  over.  She  has  had  her  boom,  and 
the  boom  has  exploded,  and  it  is  a  good  thing.  Wlien 
inflation  collapses,  a  country  gets  down  to  reality ; 
and  the  reality  is  that  Canada  has  barely  begun  to 
develop  the  exhaustless  mine  of  wealth  which  Heaven 
has  given  her.  Ontario,  complacent  with  a  fringe  of 
prosperity  along  lake  front,  is  an  instance;  Quebec, 
with  only  a  border  on  each  bank  of  her  great  rivers 
peopled,  is  another  instance ;  and  the  prairie  provinces 
are  still  more  striking  illustrations  of  the  sleeping  po- 
tentialities of  the  Dominion.  In  our  dark  days  we 
used  to  call  those  three  prairie  provinces  between  Lake 
Superior  and  the  Rockies  "the  granary  of  the  Em- 
pire."   I  am  afraid  it  was  more  in  bravado,  hoping 


SG     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

against  hope,  than  in  any  other  spirit;  for  we  were 
raising  little  grain  and  exporting  less  and  receiving 
prices  that  hardly  paid  for  the  labor.  That  was  back 
in  the  early  nineties.  To-day,  what.''  One  single  year's 
wheat  crop  from  one  only  of  those  provinces  equals 
more  gold  in  value  than  ever  came  out  of  Klondike. 
If  Britain  were  cut  off  from  every  other  source  of  food 
supply,  those  three  provinces  could  feed  the  British 
Isles  with  their  surplus  wheat.  To  be  explicit,  credit 
Great  Britain  with  a  population  of  forty-five  millions. 
Apportion  to  each  six  bushels  of  wheat — the  per 
capita  requirement  for  food,  according  to  scientists. 
Great  Britain  requires  two  hundred  and  eighty  to 
three  hundred  million  bushels  of  wheat  for  bread  only 
— not  to  be  manufactured  into  cereal  products,  which 
is  another  and  enormous  demand  in  itself.  Of  the 
wheat  required  for  bread,  Great  Britain  herself  raises 
only  fifty  to  sixty  million  bushels,  leaving  a  deficit, 
which  must  come  from  outside  sources,  of  two  hun- 
dred million  bushels. 

In  1912  Canada  raised  one  hundred  and  ninety-nine 
million  bushels  of  wheat.  In  1913,  of  grain  products, 
Canada  exported  one  hundred  and  ten  million  bushels ; 
of  flour  products,  almost  twenty  million  dollars' 
worth.  Under  stress  of  need  or  high  prices  these 
totals  could  easily  be  trebled.  The  figures  are,  in- 
deed,  bewildering   in   their   bigness.      In   the   three 


FOUNDATION    FOR    HOPE  37 

prairie  provinces  there  were  under  cultivation  in  1912 
for  all  crops  only  sixteen  and  one-half  million  acres.* 
At  twenty  bushels  to  the  acre  this  area  put  under 
wheat  would  feed  Great  Britain.  But  note — only  six- 
teen and  one-half  million  acres  were  under  cultivation. 
There  have  been  surveyed  as  suitable  for  cultivation 
one  hundred  and  fifty-eight  million  acres.  The  land 
area  of  the  three  prairie  provinces  is  four  hundred  and 
sixty-six  million  acres.  If  only  half  the  land  surveyed 
as  suitable  for  cultivation  were  put  in  wheat — namely 
seventy-nine  million  acres ;  and  if  it  yielded  only  ten 
bushels  to  the  acre  (it  usually  yields  nearer  twenty  than 
ten),  the  three  prairie  provinces  of  Canada  would  be 
producing  crops  equal  to  the  entire  spring  wheat  pro- 
duction of  the  United  States.  Grant,  then,  two  bushels 
for  reseeding,  or  one  hundred  and  fifty-eight  million 
bushels,  and  six  bushels  for  food,  or  fifty  million 
bushels,  the  three  prairie  provinces  would  still  have 
for  export  more  than  five  hundred  million  bushels. 
All  this  presupposes  population.  Granting  each  man 
one  hundred  and  sixty  acres,  it  presupposes  493,750 
more  farmers  than  are  in  the  West;  but  coming  to 
Canada  yearly  are  four  hundred  thousand  settlers ;  so 
that  counting  four  out  of  every  five  settlers  children, 
in  half  a  decade  at  the  least,  Western  Canada  will  have 


*  Under  crop  in  Manitoba,  Saskatchewan  and  Alberta 
16,478,000  acres.  Area  surveyed  available  for  cultivation 
158,516,427  acres;  land  area,  466,068,798  acres. 


38     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

five  hundred  thousand  more  farmers — enough  to  feed 
Great  Britain  and  still  have  a  surplus  of  wheat  for 
Europe. 

In  connection  with  wheat  exports  from  the  West 
one  factor  should  never  be  ignored — ^the  influence  of 
the  Great  Lakes  and  the  Soo  Canal  in  reducing 
freight  to  the  West.  Great  Lakes  freight  tolls  are 
to-daj  the  cheapest  in  the  world,  and  their  influence 
in  minimizing  the  toll  on  the  all-land  haul  must  never 
be  ignored.  Freight  can  be  carried  on  the  Great 
Lakes  one  thousand  miles  for  the  same  rate  charged 
on  rail  rate  for  one  hundred  miles.* 

And  wheat  is  not  the  only  product  of  the  three 
prairie  provinces.  On  the  borderland  between  Mani- 
toba and  Saskatchewan  are  enormous  deposits  of  coal 
which  have  not  yet  been  explored.  Canoeing  once 
through  Eastern  Saskatchewan  and  Northern  Mani- 
toba, I  saw  a  piece  of  almost  pure  copper  brought 
down  from  the  hinterland  of  Churchill  River  by  an 
Indian,  from  an  unknown  mine,  which  no  white  man 
has  yet  found.  On  the  borderland  between  Alberta 
and  British  Columbia  is  a  ridge  of  coal  deposits  which 
such  conservative  experts  as  the  late  George  Dawson 
estimated  would  mine  four  million  tons  a  year  for 
five  thousand  3^ears.  These  coal  deposits  seem  almost 
nature's  special  provision  for  the  treeless  plains. 

*  The  rate  from  the  head  of  the  Lakes  to  Montreal  is  usu- 
ally four  to  five  cents.  It  has  been  as  low  as  one  cent,  when 
grain  was  carried  almost  for  ballast. 


FOUNDATION   FOR   HOPE  39 

It  is  well  known  that  the  decrease  in  white  fish  in 
the  Great  Lakes  for  the  past  ten  years  has  been  ap- 
palling. Northward  of  Churchill  River  is  a  region 
of  chains  of  lakes — the  Lesser  Great  Lakes,  they  have 
been  called — ^and  these  are  the  only  untouched  in- 
land fisheries  in  America.  To  the  exporter  they  are 
ideal  fishing  ground.  The  climate  is  cool.  The  fish 
can  be  sent  out  frozen  to  American  markets.  Of  Can- 
ada's thirty-four  million  dollars'  worth  of  fish  in 
1912,  one  and  one-half  million  dollars'  worth  came 
from  the  three  prairie  provinces. 

Under  the  old  boundaries,  the  three  prairie  prov- 
inces compared  in  area  respectively  Manitoba  with 
Great  Britain ;  Saskatchewan  with  France ;  Alberta, 
one  and  a  half  times  larger  than  Germany.  Under 
the  new  boundaries  extending  the  province  to  Hudson 
Bay,  Manitoba  is  fifty-tM'o  thousand  square  miles 
larger  than  Germany;  Saskatchewan  extended  north 
is  fifty  thousand  square  miles  larger  than  France; 
and  Alberta  extended  north  is  fifty  thousand  square 
miles  larger  than  Germany.  And  north  of  the  three 
grain  provinces  is  an  area  the  size  of  European 
Russia. 

We  talk  of  Canada's  boom  as  "done,"  but  has  it 
even  begun?  Strathcona  used  to  say  that  the  three 
prairie  provinces  would  support  a  population  of  one 
hundred  million.     Was  he  right.''     On  the  basis  of 


40     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

Europe's  population  the  three  provinces  would  sus- 
tain three  times  Germany's  sixty-five  millions. 


VI 


In  British  Columbia  one  reaches  the  province  of 
the  greatest  natural  wealth,  the  greatest  diversity  In 
climate  and  the  most  feverish  activity  in  Canada. 
East  of  the  mountains  is  a  climate  high,  cold  and 
bracing  as  Russia  or  Switzerland.  Between  the  ranges 
of  the  mountains  are  valleys  mild  as  France.  On  the 
coast  toward  the  south  is  a  climate  like  Italy ;  toward 
the  north,  like  Scotland.  Of  Canada's  entire  timber 
area — twice  as  great  as  Europe's  standing  timber — 
three-quarters  lie  in  British  Columbia.  Fruit  equal 
to  Niagara's,  fisheries  richer  than  the  maritime  prov- 
inces, mines  yielding  more  than  Klondike — exist  In 
this  most  favored  of  provinces.  While  the  area  is  a 
half  larger  than  Germany,  the  population  Is  smaller 
than  that  of  a  suburb  of  Berlin.*  Of  Canada's  thirty- 
four  million  dollars'  worth  of  fish,  thirteen  million  dol- 
lars' worth  come  from  British  Columbia;  and  of  her 
products  of  forty-six  millions  of  precious  and  fifty- 
six  millions  of  non-metallic  minerals  in  1911  easily 
haJf  came  from  British  Columbia.f 


♦  British  Columbia's  population  in  1912  was  392,480. 

t  Canada,  mineral  production  for  1911  stands  thus:  copper, 
$6,911,831;  gold,  $9,672,096;  iron,  $700,216;  lead,  $818,672; 
nickel,  $10,229,623;  silver,  $17,452,128;  other  metal,  $322,862; 


FOUNDATION   FOR    HOPE  41 

Instead  of  that  repose  which  marks  the  maritime 
provinces,  one  finds  an  eager  fronting  to  the  future 
that  is  almost  feverish.  If  Panama  Is  turning  the 
entire  Pacific  into  a  front  door  Instead  of  a  back  door, 
then  British  Columbia  knows  the  coign  of  vantage, 
which  she  holds  as  an  outlet  for  half  Canada's  com- 
merce by  way  of  the  Pacific.  It  Is  In  British  Colum- 
bia that  East  must  meet  West  and  work  out  destiny. 


total,  $46,197,428.  Non-metallic  production  1911:  coal  $26,- 
378,477;  cement,  $7,571,299;  clay,  $8,317,709;  stone,  $3,680,361; 
in  all,  $56,094,258. 


CHAPTER  ni 


THE  TIE  THAT  BINDS 


It  is  easy  to  understand  what  binds  the  provinces 
into  a  confederation.  They  had  to  bind  themselves 
into  a  unity  with  the  British  North  America  Act  or 
see  their  national  existence  threatened  by  any  band  of 
settlers  who  might  rush  in  and  by  a  perfectly  legiti- 
mate process  of  naturalization  and  voting  set  up  self- 
government.  At  the  time  of  confederation  such  emi- 
nent Imperial  statesmen  as  Gladstone  and  Labouchere 
seriously  considered  whether  it  would  not  be  better  to 
cut  Canada  adrift,  if  she  wanted  to  be  cut  adrift.  The 
difference  between  the  Canadian  provinces  and  the 
isolated  Latin  republics  of  South  America  illustrates 
best  what  the  bond  of  confederation  did  for  the  Do- 
minion. The  why  and  how  of  confederation  is  easy 
to  understand,  but  what  tie  binds  Canada  to  the 
Mother  Country.?  That  is  a  point  almost  impossible 
for  an  outsider  to  understand. 

England  contributes  not  a  farthing  to  Canada. 
Canada  contributes  not  a  dime  to  England.     Though 

42 


THE    TIE    THAT    BINDS  43 

a  tariff  against  alien  lands  and  trade  concessions  to 
her  colonies  would  bring  such  prosperity  to  those  col- 
onies as  Midas  could  not  dream,  England  confers  no 
trade  favor  to  her  colonial  children.  There  have  been 
times,  indeed,  when  she  discriminated  against  them  by 
embargoes  on  cattle  or  boundary  concessions  to  cement 
peace  with  foreign  powers.  Except  for  a  slight  trade 
concession  of  twenty  to  twenty-five  per  cent,  on  im- 
ports from  England — ^which,  of  course,  helps  the  Ca- 
nadian buyer  as  much  as  it  helps  the  British  seller — 
Canada  grants  no  favors  to  the  Mother  Country.  In 
spite  of  those  trade  concessions  to  England,  in  1913 
for  every  dollar's  worth  Canada  bought  from  Eng- 
land, she  bought  four  dollars'  worth  from  the  United 
States. 

Certainly,  England  sends  Canada  a  Governor- 
General  every  four  years ;  but  the  Cabinet  of  England 
never  appoints  a  Governor-General  to  Canada  till  it 
has  been  unofficially  ascertained  from  the  Cabinet  of 
the  Dominion  whether  he  will  be  persona  grata. 
Canada  gives  the  Governor-General  fifty  thousand 
dollars  a  year  and  some  perquisites — an  emolument 
that  can  barely  sustain  the  style  of  living  expected 
and  exacted  from  the  appointee,  who  must  maintain  a 
small  viceregal  court.  The  Governor-General  has  the 
right  of  veto  on  all  bills  passed  by  the  Canadian  gov- 
ernment ;  and  where  an  act  might  conflict  with  Imperial 
interests,  he  would  doubtless  exercise  the  right;  but 


44     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

the  veto  power  in  the  hands  of  the  Imperial  vicegerent 
is  so  rarely  used  as  to  be  almost  dead.  Veto  is  avoided 
by  the  Governor-General  working  in  close  conference 
with  the  prevailing  Cabinet,  or  party  in  power ;  and  a 
party  on  the  verge  of  enacting  laws  inimical  to  Im- 
perial interests  can  be  disciplined  by  dismissal  from 
office,  in  which  case  the  party  must  appeal  to  the  coun- 
try for  re-election.  That  means  time ;  and  time  allows 
passion  to  simmer  down ;  and  an  entire  electorate  is  not 
likely  to  perpetrate  a  policy  inimical  to  Imperial  in- 
terests. In  practice,  that  represents  the  whole,  sole 
and  entire  power  of  England's  representative  in  Can- 
ada— a  power  less  than  the  nod  of  a  saloon  keeper  or 
ward  boss  in  the  civic  politics  of  the  United  States. 
Officially,  yes ;  the  signature  of  the  Governor-General 
is  put  to  commissions  and  appointments  of  first  rank 
in  the  army  and  the  Cabinet  and  the  courts.  In  re- 
ality, it  is  a  question  if  any  Governor  in  Canada  since 
confederation  has  as  much  as  suggested  the  name  of 
an  applicant  for  office. 

On  the  other  hand,  Canada's  dependence  on  Eng- 
land is  even  more  tenuous.  Does  a  question  come  up  as 
to  the  "twilight  zone"  of  provincial  and  federal  rights, 
it  is  settled  by  an  appeal  to  the  Privy  Council.  Suits 
from  lower  courts  reversed  by  the  Supreme  Court  of 
Canada  can  be  appealed  to  England  for  decision ;  and 
in  religious  disputes  as  to  schools — as  in  the  famous 
Manitoba  School  Case — this  right  of  appeal  to  Im- 


THE    TIE    THAT    BINDS  46 

perial  decision  has  really  been  the  door  out  of  dilemma 
for  both  parties  in  Canada.  It  is  a  shifting  of  the 
burden  of  a  decision  that  must  certainly  alienate  one 
section  of  votes — from  the  shoulders  of  the  Canadian 
parties  to  an  impartial  Imperial  tribunal. 

If  there  be  any  other  evidence  of  bonds  in  the  tan- 
gible holding  Canada  to  England  and  England  to 
Canada — ^I  do  not  know  it. 


n 


What,  then,  is  the  tie  that  binds  colony  to  Mother 
Country?  Tangible — it  is  not;  but  real  as  life  or 
death,  who  can  doubt,  when  a  self-governing  colony 
voluntarily  equips  and  despatches  sixty  thousand  men 
— the  choice  sons  of  the  land — ^to  be  pounded  into  pulp 
in  an  Imperial  war?  Who  can  doubt  the  tie  is  real, 
when  bishops'  sons,  bankers',  lawyers',  doctors',  farm- 
ers', carpenters',  teachers'  and  preachers' — ^the  young 
and  picked  heritors  of  the  land — clamor  a  hundred 
thousand  strong  to  enlist  in  defense  of  England  and 
to  face  howitzer,  lyddite  and  shell?  Why  not  rest  se- 
cure under  the  Monroe  Doctrine  that  forever  fore- 
fends  European  conquest?  It  is  something  the  out- 
sider can  not  understand.  President  Taft  could  not 
understand  it  when  his  reciprocity  pact  was  defeated 
in  Canada  partly  because  of  his  own  ill-advised  words 
about  Canada  drifting  from  United  States  interests. 


^6    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

Canada  was  not  drifting  from  American  interests.  In 
trade  and  in  transportation  her  interests  are  inter- 
linking with  the  United  States  every  day;  but  the 
point — which  President  Taft  failed  to  understand — 
is:  Canada  is  not  drifting  because  she  is  sheet-an- 
chored and  gripped  to  the  Mother  Country.  We  may 
like  it  or  dislike  it.  We  may  dispute  and  argue  round 
about.  The  fact  remains,  without  any  screaming  or 
flag  waving,  or  postprandial  loyalty  expansions  of 
rotund  oratory  and  a  rotunder  waist  line — Canada  is 
sheet-anchored  to  England  by  an  invisible,  intangible, 
almost  indescribable  tie.  That  is  one  reason  why  she 
rejected  reciprocity.  That  is  why  at  a  colossal  cost  in 
land  and  subsidies  and  loans  and  guarantees  of  almost 
two  billions,  she  has  built  up  a  transportation  system 
east  and  west,  instead  of  north  and  south.  That  is 
why  for  a  century  she  has  hewn  her  way  through 
mountains  of  difficulty  to  a  destiny  of  her  own,  when 
it  would  have  been  easier  and  more  profitable  to  have 
cast  in  her  lot  with  the  United  States. 

What  is  the  tie  that  binds?  Is  it  the  hope  of  an 
Imperial  Federation,  which  shall  bind  the  whole  Brit- 
ish Empire  into  such  a  world  federation  as  now  holds 
the  provinces  of  the  Dominion  ?  Twenty  years  ago,  if 
you  had  asked  that,  the  answer  might  have  been 
*'Yes."  Canada  was  in  the  dark  financially  and  did 
not  see  her  way  out.  If  only  the  Chamberlain  scheme 
of  a  tariff  against  the  world,  free  trade  within  the 


THE    TIE    THAT    BINDS  47 

empire,  could  have  evolved  into  practical  politics, 
Canada  for  purely  practical  reasons  would  have  wel- 
comed Imperial  Federation.  It  would  have  given  her 
exports  a  wonderful  outlet.  But  to-day  Imperial  Fed- 
eration is  a  deader  issue  in  Canada  than  reciprocity 
with  the  United  States.  No  more  books  are  written 
about  it.  No  one  speaks  of  it.  No  one  wants  it.  No 
one  has  time  for  it.  The  changed  attitude  of  mind  is 
well  illustrated  by  an  incident  on  Parliament  Hill, 
Ottawa,  one  day. 

A  Cabinet  Minister  was  walking  along  the  terrace 
above  the  river  talking  to  a  prominent  public  man  of 
England. 

"How  about  Imperial  Federation  ?"  asked  the  Eng- 
lishman.   "Do  you  want  it.'"' 

The  Canadian  statesman  did  not  answer  at  once. 
He  pointed  across  the  Ottawa,  where  the  blue  shim- 
mering Laurentians  seem  to  recede  and  melt  into  a 
domain  of  infinitude.  "Why  should  we  want  Imperial 
Federation?"  he  answered.  "We  have  an  empire  the 
size  of  Europe,  whose  problems  we  must  work  out. 
Why  should  Canadians  go  to  Westminster  to  legislate 
on  a  deceased  wife's  sister's  bills  and  Welsh  disestab- 
lishment and  silly  socialistic  panaceas  for  the  unfit  to 
plunder  the  fit?" 

It  will  be  noticed  that  his  answer  had  none  of  that 
flunkeyism  to  which  Goldwin  Smith  used  to  ascribe 
much  of  Canadian  pro-loyalty.     Rather  was  there  a 


48     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

grave  recognition  of  the  colossal  burden  of  helping  a 
nation  the  area  of  Europe  to  work  out  her  destiny  in 
wisdom  and  in  integrity  and  in  the  certainty  that  is 
built  up  only  from  rock  bottom  basis  of  fact. 

Has  flunkeyism  any  part  in  the  pro-loyalty  of 
Canada?  Goldwin  Smith  thought  it  had,  and  we  all 
know  Canadians  whose  swelling  lip-loyalty  is  a  sort  of 
Gargantuan  thunder.  It  may  be  observed,  parenthet- 
ically, those  Canadians  are  not  the  personages  who  re- 
ceive recognition  from  England. 

*'Sorry,  Your  Royal  Highness,  sorry ;  but  Canada  is 
becoming  horribly  contaminated  by  Americanizing  in- 
fluences," apologized  a  pro-loyalist  of  the  lip-flunkey 
variety  to  the  Duke  of  Connaught  shortly  after  that 
scion  of  royalty  came  to  Canada  as  Governor. 

The  Duke  of  Connaught  turned  and  looked  the 
fussy  lip-loyalist  over.  "What's  good  enough  for 
Americans  is  good  enough  for  me,"  he  said. 

An  instance  of  the  absence  of  flunkeyism  from  the 
Dominion's  loyalty  to  the  Mother  Country  occurred 
during  the  visit  of  the  present  King  as  Prince  of 
Wales  to  the  Canadian  Northwest  a  few  years  ago. 
The  royal  train  had  arrived  at  some  little  western 
place,  where  a  contingent  of  the  Mounted  Police  was 
to  act  as  escort  for  the  Prince's  entourage.  The  train 
had  barely  pulled  in  when  a  fussy  little  long-coat- 
tailed  secretary  flew  John-Gilpin  fashion  across  the 


THE    TIE    THAT    BINDS  49 

station  platform  to  a  khaki  trooper  of  the  Mounted 
PoHce. 

"His  Royal  Highness  has  arrived!  His  Royal 
Highness  has  arrived,"  gasped  the  little  secretary, 
almost  apoplectic  with  self-importance.  "Come  and 
help  to  get  the  baggage  off — " 

"You  go  to  ,"  answered  the  khaki-uniformed 

trooper,  aiming  a  tobacco  wad  that  flew  past  the  little 
secretary's  ear.  "Get  the  baggage  off  yourself! 
We're  not  here  as  porters.  We're  here  to  execute  or- 
ders and  we  don't  take  'em  from  little  damphool 
fussies  like  you." 

Yet  that  trooper  was  of  the  company  that  made 
the  Strathcona  Horse  famous  in  South  Africa — fa- 
mous for  such  daring  abandon  in  their  charges  that 
the  men  could  hardly  be  held  within  bounds  of  official 
orders.  He  is  of  the  very  class  of  men  who  have  for- 
saken gainful  occupations  in  the  West  to  clamor  a 
hundred-thousand  strong  for  the  privilege  of  fighting 
to  the  last  ditch  for  the  empire  under  the  rain  of  death 
from  German  fire. 

"How  can  Canadians  be  loyal  to  a  system  of  gov- 
ernment that  acknowledges  some  fat  king  sitting  on  a 
throne  chair  like  a  mummy  as  ruler?"  demanded  an 
American  woman  of  a  Canadian  man. 

"Well,"  answered  the  Canadian,  "I  don't  know  that 
any  *fat  king'  was  ever  quite  so  fat  as  a  gentleman 


50     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

named  Mammon  who  plays  a  pretty  big  part  in  the 
government  of  all  republics."  He  drew  a  five-dollar 
bill  from  his  pocket.  "As  a  piece  of  paper  that  is  ut- 
terly worthless,"  he  explained.  "It  isn't  even  good 
wrapping  paper.  It's  a  promise  to  pay — ^to  deliver 
the  goods,  that  gives  it  value.  It's  what  the  system  of 
government  stands  for  that  rouses  support — ^not  this, 
that,  or  the  other  man — " 

"But  what  does  it  stand  for?"  interrupted  the 
American;  and  the  Canadian  couldn't  answer.  It 
roused  and  held  his  loyalty  as  if  of  family  ties.  Yet 
he  could  not  define  it. 

He  might  have  explained  that  Canada  has  had  a 
system  of  justice  since  1837  never  truckled  to  nor 
trafficked  in,  but  he  knew  in  his  heart  that  the  loyalty 
was  to  a  something  deeper  than  that.  He  knew  that 
many  republics — Switzerland,  for  instance — have  as 
impartial  a  system  of  justice.  He  might  have 
descanted  on  the  British  North  America  Act  being  to 
Canada  what  the  Constitution  is  to  the  United  States, 
only  more  elastic,  more  susceptible  to  growth  and 
changing  conditions;  but  he  knew  that  the  Constitu- 
tion was  what  it  was  owing  to  this  other  principle  of 
which  law  and  justice  were  but  the  visible  formula.  He 
might  easily  have  dilated  on  excellent  features  of  the 
Canadian  parliamentary  system  different  from  the 
United  States  or  Germany.  For  instance,  no  party 
can  hold  office  one  day  after  it  lacks  the  support  of  a 


THE    TIE    THAT    BINDS  61 

majority  vote.  It  must  resign  reins  to  the  other 
party,  or  go  to  the  country  for  re-election.  Or  he 
might  have  pointed  to  the  very  excellent  feature  of 
Cabinet  Ministers  sitting  in  the  House  and  being  di- 
rectly responsible  to  Commons  and  Senate  for  the 
management  of  their  departments  to  the  expenditure 
of  a  farthing.  A  Cabinet  member  who  may  be  quizzed 
to-day,  to-morrow,  every  day  in  the  week  except  Sun- 
day, on  the  management  of  affairs  under  him  can 
never  take  refuge  in  ambiguous  silence  or  behind  the 
skirts  of  his  chief,  as  secretaries  delinquent  have  fre- 
quently taken  refuge  behind  the  spotless  reputation  of 
a  too-confiding  President.  But  the  Canadian  explained 
none  of  these  tilings.  He  knew  that  these  things  were 
only  the  outward  and  visible  formula  of  the  principle 
to  which  he  was  loyal. 


HI 


A  few  years  ago  the  mistake  would  have  been  im- 
possible; for  there  was,  up  to  1900,  practically  no 
movement  of  settlers  from  the  British  Isles  to  Canada ; 
but  to-day  with  an  enormous  in-rush  of  British  colo- 
nists to  the  Dominion,  a  superficial  observer  might 
ascribe  the  loyalty  to  the  ties  of  blood — to  the  fact 
that  between  1900  and  1911,  685,067  British  colonists 
flocked  to  Canada.  Not  counting  colossal  investments 
of  British  capital,  there  are  to-day  easily  a  million 


62    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

Britishers  living  on  and  drawing  their  sustenance 
from  the  soil  of  Canada.  And  yet,  however  unpala- 
table and  ungracious  the  fact  may  be  to  Englishmen, 
the  ties  of  blood  have  little  to  do  with  the  bond  that 
holds  Canada  to  England.  This  statement  will  arouse 
protest  from  a  certain  section  of  Canadians ;  but  those 
same  Canadians  know  there  are  hundreds — yes,  thou- 
sands— of  mercantile  houses  in  the  Dominion  where 
employers  practically  put  up  the  sign — "No  English- 
man need  apply." 

"I've  come  to  the  point,"  said  a  wholesale  hardware 
man  of  a  Canadian  city,  "where  I  won't  employ  a  man 
if  he  has  a  cockney  accent.  I've  tried  it  hundreds  of 
times,  and  it  has  always  ended  the  same  way.  I  have 
to  break  a  cockney's  neck  before  I  can  convince  him 
that  I  know  the  way  I  want  things  done,  and  they  have 
to  be  done  that  way.  He  is  so  sure  I  am  *ownley  a 
demmed  ke-lo-neal'  that  he  is  lecturing  me  on  how  I 
should  do  things  before  he  is  in  my  establishment  ten 
minutes.  I  don't  know  what  it  is.  It  may  be  that 
coming  suddenly  to  a  land  where  all  men  are  treated 
on  an  equality  and  not  kicked  and  expected  to  doff 
caps  in  thanks  for  the  insolence,  they  can't  stand  the 
free  rein  and  not  go  locoed.  All  I  know  is — where  I'll 
employ  an  Irishman,  or  a  Scotchman,  or  a  Yorkshire- 
man,  on  the  jump,  I  will  not  employ  a  cockney.  I 
don't  want  to  commit  murder." 

And  that  business  man  voiced  the  sentiment  of  mul- 


THE    TIE    THAT    BINDS  53 

titudes  from  farm,  factory  and  shop.  I'll  not  forget, 
myself,  the  semi-comic  episode  of  rescuing  an  English 
woman  from  destitution  and  having  her  correct  my 
Canadian  expressions  five  minutes  after  I  had  given 
her  a  roof.  She  had  referred  to  her  experience  as 
"jolly  rotten";  and  I  had  remarked  that  strangers 
sometimes  had  hard  luck  because  *Ve  Canadians 
couldn't  place  them,"  when  I  was  roundly  called  to 
order  by  a  tongue  that  never  in  its  life  audibly  articu- 
lated an  "h." 

IV 

Before  digging  down  to  the  subterranean  springs 
of  Canadian  loyalty,  we  must  take  emphatic  cogni- 
zance of  several  facts.  Canada,  while  not  a  republic, 
is  one  of  the  most  democratic  nations  in  the  world. 
Practically  every  man  of  political,  financial  or  indus- 
trial prominence  in  Canada  to-day  came  up  by  the 
shirt-sleeve  route  in  one  generation.  If  there  is  an 
exception  to  this  statement — and  I  know  every  part 
of  Canada  almost  as  well  as  I  know  my  own  home — I 
do  not  know  it.  Sifton,  Van  Home,  MacKenzie, 
Mann,  Laurier,  Borden,  Foster,  the  late  Sir  John 
Macdonald — all  came  up  from  penniless  boyhood 
through  their  own  efforts  to  what  Canadians  rate  as 
success.  I  said  "what  Canadians  rate  as  success."  I 
did  not  say  to  affluence,  for  Canadians  do  not  rate 
affluence  by  itself  as  success.     Laurier,  Foster,  Sir 


64»    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

John  Macdonald — each  began  as  a  poor  man.  SIfton 
began  life  as  a  penniless  lawyer.  Van  Home  got  his 
foot  on  the  first  rung  of  the  ladder  hustling  cars  for 
troops  in  the  Civil  War.  MacKenzie  of  Canada 
Northern  fame  began  with  a  trowel ;  Dan  Mann  with 
an  ax  in  the  lumber  woods  at  a  period  when  wages  were 
a  dollar  and  twenty-five  cents  a  day;  Laurier  with  a 
lawyer's  parchment  and  not  a  thing  else  in  the  world. 
Foster,  the  wizard  of  finance,  taught  his  first  finance 
in  a  schoolroom.  And  so  one  might  go  on  down  the  list 
of  Canada's  great.  Unless  I  am  gravely  mistaken  the 
richest  industrial  leader  of  Ontario  began  life  in  a  lit- 
tle bake  shop,  where  his  wife  cooked  and  he  sold  the 
wares ;  and  the  richest  man  in  the  Canadian  West  be- 
gan with  a  pick  in  a  mine.  I  doubt  if  there  is  a  single 
instance  in  Canada  of  a  public  man  whose  family's  se- 
curity from  want  traces  back  prior  to  1867. 

But  the  richest  are  not  rated  the  most  successful  in 
Canada.  There  is  an  untold  and  untellable  tragedy 
here.  There  is  many  a  city  in  Canada  which  has  a 
Mr.  Rich-Man's-Folly  in  the  shape  of  a  palatial  house 
or  castellated  residence  which  failed  to  force  open  the 
portals  of  respect  and  recognition  for  himself.  Folly 
Castle  has  been  occupied  in  an  isolation  that  was  al- 
most quarantine.  Why?  Because  its  foundations 
were  laid  in  some  financial  mud,  which  Canada  never 
forgets  and  never  forgives.  Instances  could  be  multi- 
plied of  brilliant  politicians  retired  to  private  life,  of 


THE    TIE    THAT    BINDS  55 

moneyed  men  who  spent  fortunes  to  buy  a  knighthood, 
a  baronetcy,  an  earldom — and  died  disappointed  be- 
cause in  early  life  they  had  used  fiduciary  funds  or 
trafficked  in  politics.  It  may  impart  a  seeming  snob- 
bery to  Canadian  life,  an  almost  crude  insolence ;  but 
it  keeps  a  title  from  becoming  the  insignia  of  an  en- 
vied dollar  bill.  It  keeps  men  from  buying  what  their 
conduct  failed  to  win.  It  does  more  than  anything 
else  to  keep  down  that  envy  of  true  success  which  is 
the  curse  of  many  lands.  Canadian  papers  rarely 
trouble  to  chronicle  whether  a  rich  man  wears  the  hair 
shirt  of  a  troubled  conscience,  or  the  paper  vest  of  a 
tight  purse.  They  are  not  interested  in  him  simply 
because  he  is  rich.  If  he  loots  a  franchise  and  un- 
loads rotten  stocks  on  widows  and  orphans  and  teach- 
ers and  preachers,  they  call  him  a  thief  and  send  him 
to  jail  a  convict.  Three  decades  ago  the  premier's 
own  nephew  misused  public  funds.  It  could  have  been 
hushed  by  the  drop  of  a  hat  or  the  wave  of  a  hand. 
The  party  in  power  was  absolutely  dominant.  The 
culprit  was  arrested  at  nine  in  the  morning  and  sen- 
tenced to  seven  years  in  the  penitentiary  by  six  that 
day  ;  and  he  served  the  term,  too,  without  any  political 
wash  to  clear  him.  Instances  are  not  lacking  of  titled 
adventurers  ostracized  in  Winnipeg  and  Montreal  go- 
ing to  Newport  and  capturing  the  richest  heiresses  of 
the  land.  These  instances  are  not  mentioned  in  invidi- 
ous self-righteousness.     They  are  mentioned  purely 


56     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

to  illustrate  the  underlying,  unspoken  difference  in 
essential  values. 


Set  down,  then,  two  or  three  premises !  Canada  is 
under  a  monarchy,  but  in  practice  is  a  democratic 
country.  Canada  is  absolutely  impartial  in  her  jus- 
tice to  rich  and  poor.  Have  we  dug  down  to  the  foun- 
tain spring  of  Canadian  loyalty.''  Not  at  all.  These 
are  not  springs.  They  are  national  states  of  mind. 
These  characteristics  are  psychology.  What  is  the 
rock  bottom  spring?  One  sometimes  finds  the  presence 
of  a  hidden  spring  by  signs — green  grass  among 
parched ;  the  twist  of  a  peach  or  hazel  twig  in  answer 
to  the  presence  of  water;  the  direction  of  the  brook 
below.  What  are  the  signs  of  Canada's  springs.'' 
Signs,  remember ;  not  proofs.  Of  proofs,  there  is  no 
need. 

Perfectly  impartially,  whether  we  like  it  or  dislike 
it,  without  any  argument  for  or  against,  let  us  set 
down  Canadian  likes  and  dislikes  as  to  government. 
These  are  not  my  likes  and  dislikes.  They  are  not 
your  likes  and  dislikes.  They  are  facts  as  to  the 
Canadian  people. 

Canadians  have  no  faith  in  a  system  of  government, 
whether  under  a  Turkish  Khan  or  a  Lloyd  George 
Chancellor,  which  delegates  the  rule  of  a  nation  to 


THE    TIE    THAT    BINDS  57 

butchers  and  bakers  and  candlestick-makers  and  "the 
dear  people"  fakers.  They  do  not  believe  tliat  a  man 
who  can  not  rule  his  own  affairs  well  can  rule  the  na- 
tion well.  They  regard  government  as  a  grave  and 
sacred  function,  not  as  a  grab  bag  for  spoils.  If  a 
party  makes  good  in  power,  they  have  no  fear  of 
leaving  that  party  in  power  for  term  after  term.  The 
longer  their  premier  is  in  office  the  more  efficient  they 
think  he  will  become.  They  have  no  fear  of  the  pre- 
mier becoming  a  "fat"  tyrannical  king.  Long  as  the 
party  makes  good,  they  consider  it  has  a  right  to 
power;  and  that  experience  adds  to  competency.  In- 
stantly the  party  fails  to  make  good,  they  throw  it  out 
independent  of  the  length  of  its  tenure  of  office. 

Canadians  do  not  believe  that  "I-am-as-good-as- 
you-are-and-a-little-better."  They  will  accept  the  fact 
that  "I-am-as-good-as-you-are"  only  when  I  prove  it 
in  brain,  in  brawn,  in  courtesy,  in  mental  agility,  in 
business  acumen,  in  service — in  a  word,  in  fact.  They 
are  comparatively  untouched  by  the  theoretical  radi- 
calism of  the  French  Revolution,  by  the  socialism  of 
a  Lloyd  George,  by  the  war  of  labor  and  capital. 
They  are  untouched  by  theory  because  they  are  so 
intent  on  fact.  The  "liberty,  equality  and  fraternity" 
cry  of  the  French  Revolution — they  regard  as  so 
much  hot  air.  Canadians  since  1837  have  had  "liberty, 
equality,  fraternity."  Why  rant  about  it?  And 
when  they  didn't  have  it,  they  fought  for  it  and  went 


58     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

to  the  scaffold  for  it,  and  got  it.  The  day's  work — < 
that's  all.  Why  posturize  and  theorize  about  plati- 
tudes.? Canadians  are  not  interested  in  the  Lloyd 
George  theory  of  the  poor  plundering  the  prosperous, 
because  every  man  or  woman  who  tries  in  Canada  can 
succeed.  He  may  hoe  some  long  hard  rows.  Let  hini 
hoe!  It  will  harden  flabby  muscle  and  give  backbone 
in  place  of  jawbone!  Help  the  innocent  children — ■ 
yes !  There  is  a  child  saving  organization  in  every 
province.  But  if  the  adult  will  not  try,  let  him  die! 
If  he  will  not  struggle  to  survive,  let  him  die!  The 
sooner  the  better!  No  theoretical  parasites  for  Can- 
ada, nor  parlor  socialism !  "Take  off  your  coat !  Roll 
up  your  shirt-sleeves !  Stop  blathering !  Go  to  work  !'* 
says  Canada. 

"But  I  think — "  protests  the  theorist. 

"Thinks  don't  pass  currency  as  coin.  Go  to  work, 
and  pass  up  facts  "  says  Canada. 


VI 


It  may  be  objected  that  all  this  means  the  survival 
of  the  fit,  the  rule  of  the  many  by  the  few.  That  is 
exactly  what  it  means.  That  is  the  fountain  spring 
of  Canada's  national  idea,  whether  we  like  it  or  hate 
it.  That  is  the  belief  that  binds  Canada's  loyalty  to 
the  monarchical  idea — though  Canada  would  as  soon 
call  it  the  presidential  idea  as  the  monarchical  idea. 


THE    TIE    THAT    BINDS  59 

She  does  not  care  what  name  you  tag  it  by  so  long  as 
she  delegates  to  the  selected  and  elected  few  the  power 
to  rule.  She  believes  the  selected  few  are  better  than 
the  unwinnowed  many  as  rulers.  She  would  sooner 
have  a  mathematical  school-teacher  as  finance  minister 
than  a  saloon  keeper  or  ward  heeler.  She  believes  that 
the  rule  of  the  select  few  is  better  than  the  rule  of  the 
thoughtless  many.  She  delegates  the  right  and  power 
to  rule  to  those  few,  lets  them  make  the  laws  and  bows 
to  the  laws  as  to  the  laws  of  God,  as  the  best  possible 
for  the  nation  because  they  have  been  enacted  by  the 
best  of  her  nation.  If  that  best  be  bad,  it  is  at  least 
not  so  bad  as  the  worst.  She  never  says — "Pah! 
What  is  law !  I  made  the  law !  If  it  doesn't  suit  me, 
I'U  break  it.    I  am  the  law." 

Canadians  acknowledge  they  have  delegated  power 
to  make  law  to  men  whom  they  believe  superior  to  the 
general  run.  Therefore,  they  obey  that  law  as  above 
change  by  the  individual.  In  other  words,  Canadians 
believe  in  the  rule  of  the  many  delegated  to  the  supe- 
rior few.  Those  few  do  what  they  deem  wise;  not 
what  the  electorate  tell  them.  They  exceed  instruc- 
tions. They  lead.  They  do  not  obey.  But  if  they 
fail,  they  are  thrown  to  the  dogs  without  mercy, 
whether  the  tenure  of  office  be  complete  or  incomplete. 
It  is  the  old  Saxon  idea  of  the  Witenagemot — the 
council  of  a  few  wise  men  ruling  the  clan. 

There  is  the  fountain  spring  of  Canadian  loyaltj^ 


60     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

to  the  monarchical  Idea.  It  is  not  the  fat  king.  It  is 
not  any  king.  It  is  what  the  insignificant  personality 
called  "king"  stands  for,  like  the  five-dollar  bill  worth- 
less as  wrapping  paper  but  of  value  as  a  promise  to 
deliver  the  goods. 


CHAPTER  IV 


AMEKICANIZATION 


"The  Americanizing  of  Canada"  is  a  phrase  which 
has  been  much  in  vogue  with  a  section  of  the  British 
press  ever  since  the  attempt  to  estabhsh  reciprocity 
between  the  United  States  and  the  Dominion.  It  is 
a  question  if  the  ghb  users  of  the  phrase  have  the 
faintest  idea  what  they  mean  by  it.  It  is  a  catchword. 
It  sounds  ominously  deep  as  the  owl's  wise  but  mean- 
ingless "too-whoo."  English  publicists  who  have 
never  been  nearer  Canada  than  a  Dominion  postage 
stamp  wisely  warn  Canada  against  the  siren  seduc- 
tions of  Columbia's  republicanism. 

If  the  phrase  means  that  reciprocity  might  lead  to 
annexation,  Canada's  repudiation  of  reciprocity  is 
sufficient  disproof  of  the  imputation.  If  it  means  in- 
creased and  increasing  trade  weaving  a  warp  and 
woof  of  international  commerce — ^then — yes — there  is 
an  "Americanizing  of  Canada"  as  there  is  a  Canadian- 
izing  of  the  United  States  through  international  traf- 
fic ;  but  the  users  of  the  phrase  should  remember  that 

61 


62     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

the  country  doing  the  largest  trade  of  all  countries 
with  the  United  States  is  Great  Britain ;  and  does  one 
speak  of  the  "Americanizing"  of  Great  Britain?  If 
it  means  that  in  ten  years  two-fifths  as  many  Amer- 
icans have  settled  in  Western  Canada  as  there  arq 
native-born  Canadians  in  the  West — then — ^yes — Can- 
ada pleads  guilty.  She  has  spent  money  like  water 
and  is  spending  it  yet  to  attract  these  American  set- 
tlers ;  and  they,  on  their  part,  have  brought  with  them 
an  average  of  fifteen  hundred  dollars  a  settler,  not 
counting  money  invested  by  capitalists.  If  in  the  era 
between  1900  and  1911,  650,719  American  settlers 
came  to  Western  Canada,  and  from  1911  to  1914,  six 
hundred  thousand  more — or  say,  with  natural  in- 
crease, a  million  and  a  quarter  in  fifteen  years ;  to 
counterpoise  that  consideration  remember  that  in  the 
era  from  1885  to  1895  one-fifth  of  Canada's  native 
population  moved  to  the  United  States. 

There  is  not  the  slightest  doubt  that  within  ten 
years  the  balance  of  political  power  in  Canada  has 
shifted  from  the  solidarity  of  French  Quebec  to  the 
progressive  West ;  but  that  can  hardly  be  considered 
as  of  political  import  when  two  out  of  four  western 
provinces  rejected  reciprocity. 

What,  then,  is  meant  by  the  phrase  "Americanizing 
of  Canada"? 

Consider  for  a  moment  what  is  happening! 

Twenty  years  ago  the  number  of  American  and 


AMERICANIZATION  63 

Canadian  railroads  meeting  at  the  boundary  and 
crossing  the  boundary  numbered  some  six.  Ten  years 
ago  in  the  West  alone  there  were  sixteen  branch  lines 
feeding  traffic  into  one  another's  territory  across  the 
border.  To-day,  if  you  count  all  the  American  rail- 
roads reaching  up  from  trunk  lines  north  to  Canada, 
and  all  the  Canadian  spurs  reaching  south  from  trunk 
lines  into  the  United  States,  and  all  the  great  trunk 
lines  having  subsidiaries  like  the  South  Shore  and 
*'Soo"  crossing  the  border,  and  all  the  lines  having 
international  running  rights  over  one  another's  road- 
bed, there  are  more  than  sixty  railroads  feeding  Ca- 
nadian traffic  into  the  United  States  and  American 
traffic  into  Canada.  This  explains  why  of  all  the  ex- 
port grain  traffic  from  the  Northwest  forty-four  per 
cent,  only  goes  from  Canada  by  all-Canadian  routing, 
wliile  fifty-six  per  cent,  comes  to  seaboard  over  Amer- 
ican lines ;  and  all  this  is  independent  of  the  enormous 
American  traffic  through  the  Canadian  "Soo"  by  the 
Great  Lakes,  in  some  years  reaching  a  total  five  times 
as  large  as  the  traffic  expected  through  Panama.  One 
can  not  contemplate  this  constant  interchange  of  traf- 
fic without  recalling  the  metaphor  of  the  warp  and  the 
woof,  of  the  shuttle  weaving  a  fabric  of  international 
commerce  that  ignores  dead  reciprocity  pacts  and 
an  invisible  boundary.  Yet  England  does  three- 
fourths  of  the  carrying  trade  for  the  United  States 
across  the  Atlantic.    Spite  of  high  tariff  on  one  side 


64     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

of  the  ocean  and  no  tariff  on  the  other  side,  spite  of 
eagle  and  Hon  rampant,  British  ships  weave  hke  busy 
shuttles  across  the  silver  lanes  of  the  sea  an  invisible 
warp  and  woof  that  are  stronger  than  cables  of  steel, 
or  political  treaty. 

So  much  for  lines  of  traffic  between  Canada  and  the 
United  States !    What  of  the  traffic  carried  ? 

American  imports  to  Canada  have  doubled  in  three 
years ;  or  increased  from  two  hundred  sixteen  million 
dollars'  worth  in  1910  to  four  hundred  fifteen  mil- 
lion dollars'  worth  in  1913;  and  instead  of  the 
war  causing  a  falling  off,  it  is  likely  to  cause  an  in- 
crease; for  Canada's  purchases  from  Europe  have 
been  cut  off  and  must  be  supplied  by  the  United 
States.  Of  the  imports  to  Canada,  two-thirds  are 
manufactured  articles — motors,  locomotives,  cars,  cof- 
fee, cotton,  iron,  steel,  implements,  coal.  At  time  of 
writing  exports  from  the  United  States  now  rank  the 
United  Kingdom  first,  Canada  second,  Germany  third. 
When  you  consider  that  Canada's  purchasing  power 
is  that  of  seven  million  people,  where  the  United  King- 
dom's is  forty-five  and  Germany's  sixty-five  million, 
the  significance  of  these  comparative  ranks  is  apparent. 

From  Canada  to  the  United  States,  exports  in- 
creased from  $95,000,000  in  1910  to  $120,000,000 
in  1913,  not  because  Canada's  producing  power  is  so 
much  smaller  than  her  buying  power,  but  because  she 
is  growing  so  fast  that  she  consumes  much  of  what 


AMERICANIZATION  65 

she  produces.  To  put  it  another  way,  of  all  Canada 
exports,  the  United  States  takes  four-fifths  of  the 
coal,  nine-tenths  of  the  copper,  four-fifths  of  the 
nickel,  ten-elevenths  of  the  gold,  two-fifths  of  the  sil- 
ver, four-fifths  of  other  minerals,  one-third  of  the 
fish,  one-third  of  the  lumber,  one-fourth  of  the  ani- 
mals and  meat,  one-tenth  of  the  grain.  It  need  not  be 
told  here  that  the  other  portions  of  Canada's  farm, 
mine  and  lumber  exports  go  almost  entirely  to  Great 
Britain. 


II 


It  has  been  estimated  that  half  a  billion  of  Amer- 
ican capital  is  invested  in  Canada.  A  moment's 
thought  reveals  how  ridiculously  below  the  mark  are 
these  figures.  Between  1900  and  1911  by  actual 
count  there  entered  Canada  650,719  American  settlers. 
Averaging  up  one  year  with  another  by  actual  esti- 
mate of  settlers'  possessions  at  point  of  entry,  these 
settlers  were  possessed  of  fifteen  hundred  dollars  each 
in  cash.  This  represents  almost  a  billion,  and  almost 
as  many  more  American  settlers  have  entered  Canada 
since  1911.  This  represents  not  the  investments  of  the 
capital  class  but  of  small  savings.  It  takes  no  account 
of  the  nickel  mines,  the  copper  mines,  the  smelters,  the 
silver  mines,  the  coal  lands,  the  timber  limits,  the  fish- 
eries, the  vast  holdings  of  agricultural  lands  in  the 


66    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

West  held  for  speculative  purposes — for  all  of  which 
spot  cash  was  paid  down  in  large  proportion. 

The  largest  steel  plant  in  the  East,  the  largest  coal 
areas  in  the  West,  the  only  nickel  mines  in  America, 
three-quarters  of  all  the  copper  and  gold  reduction 
works  of  the  West  are  financed  by  American  capital. 
To  be  more  explicit,  when  the  MacKenzie-Mann  inter- 
ests bought  one  large  coal  area  in  British  Columbia, 
the  Hill  interests  of  St.  Paul  bought  the  other  large 
coal  area.  This  does  not  mean  there  are  not  large 
coal  areas  owned  by  Canadian  capital.  There  are — 
colossal  areas ;  but  for  every  big  area  being  worked 
by  Canadian  capital  there  are  two  such  being  worked 
by  American. 

Before  a  single  Canadian  railroad  had  wakened  up 
to  the  fact  there  were  any  mines  in  East  and  West 
Kootenay  and  the  Slocan,  American  lines  had  pushed 
up  little  narrow-gauge  lines  to  feed  the  copper  and 
gold  ores  into  Butte  and  Helena  smelters.  By  the 
time  Canadian  and  British  capital  came  on  the  scene 
in  Kootenay  the  cream  had  been  skimmed  from  the 
profits,  and  the  mines  had  reached  the  wildcat  stage 
of  beautifully  gilded  and  engraved  stock  certificates 
taking  the  place  of  real  profits — of  almost  worth-noth- 
ing shares  in  worthless  holes  in  the  ground  selling  on 
a  face  value  of  a  next-door  profit-yielding  neighbor. 
The  American  Is  without  a  peer  as  pioneer  on  land,  in 
mine,  in  forest ;  but  the  boomster,  who  invariably  f ol- 


AMERICANIZATION  67 

lows  on  the  heels  of  that  pioneer,  is  also  the  most  ex- 
pert "houn'  dawg"  to  rouse  the  wildcatter.  Cana- 
dians have  too  often  wakened  up  only  at  the  wildcat 
stage,  and  British  capital  has  come  in  to  reorganize 
inflated  and  collapsed  properties  on  a  purely  invest- 
ment basis.  The  American  pioneer  does  nothing  on 
an  investment  basis.  He  goes  in  on  a  wild  and  ram- 
pant dare-devil  gamble.  If  he  loses — as  lose  he  often 
does — he  takes  his  medicine  and  never  whines.  If  he 
wins,  the  welkin  rings. 

What  happened  in  Kootenay  was  largely  repeated 
ten  years  later  in  Klondike  and  ten  years  yet  later  in 
Cobalt,  and  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  when  Cana- 
dian capital  refused  to  bond  the  nickel  mines  of  Sud- 
bury, it  was  American  capital  that  dared  the  risk. 

What  happened  in  the  mining  booms  was  only  a 
faint  foreshadowing  of  the  furore  that  broke  to  a 
madness  in  real  estate  when  American  settlers  began 
crossing  the  boundary  in  tens  and  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands a  year.  Canadians  knew  they  had  wonderfully 
fertile  farming  land.  Hadn't  they  been  telling  them- 
selves so  since  confederation,  when  they  pledged  the 
credit  of  Canada  to  build  a  transcontinental?  They 
knew  they  had  the  most  fertile  wheat  lands  on  earth, 
but  what  was  the  use  of  knowing  that  when  you  could 
not  sell  those  lands  for  fifty  cents  an  acre?  What  was 
the  use  of  raising  forty  bushels  of  wheat  to  the  acre, 
when  you  burned  it  in  the  stack  or  fed  it  to  cattle 


68     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

worth  only  ten  dollars  a  head,  because  you  could  get 
neither  wheat  nor  cattle  to  market?  You  really  be- 
lieved you  had  the  best  land  on  earth,  but  what  good 
did  the  belief  do  you?  Sons  and  daughters  forsook 
the  Canadian  farmstead  for  the  United  States.  Be- 
tween the  early  eighties  and  the  early  nineties,  of 
Canada's  population  of  five  millions,  over  a  million — 
some  estimates  place  it  at  a  million  and  a  half — Cana- 
dians left  the  Dominion  for  the  United  States.  You 
find  the  place  names  of  Ontario  all  through  Michigan 
and  Wisconsin  and  Minnesota  and  the  two  Dakotas ; 
and  you  find  Jean  Ba'tiste  drifting  from  the  lumber 
woods  of  Quebec  to  the  Upper  Peninsula  of  Michigan 
and  to  the  redwoods  of  California  and  to  the  yellow 
pine  uplands  of  the  Southwestern  Desert.  I  have  met 
men  who  worked  for  my  brothers  in  the  lumber  woods 
of  Wisconsin  down  among  the  yellow  pines  of  the 
Arizona  Desert.  All  that  was  back  in  the  decrepit 
and  languid  and  hopesick  nineties.  It  was  then  you 
could  see  the  skies  of  Southern  Manitoba  luridly 
aflame  at  night  with  wheat  stacks  it  didn't  pay  to 
thresh. 

Came  a  turn  of  the  wheel!  Was  it  Destiny  or 
Providence?  We  talk  mistily  of  Cause  and  Effect, 
but  who  drops  the  Cause  that  turns  the  Wheel  ?  Who 
of  us  that  witnessed  the  crazy  gold  stampede  to  Koote- 
nay  and  the  crazier  stampede  to  Klondike  could  guess 
that  the  backwash  of  those  foolish  tidal  waves  of 


AMERICANIZATION  69 

gold-mad  humanity  would  people  the  Northwest? 
Why,  we  were  mad  with  alarm  over  the  gold  stam- 
pede! Men  pitched  their  homesteads  to  the  winds 
and  trekked  penniless  for  the  mines.  Women  bought 
mining  shares  for  a  dollar  that  were  not  worth  ten 
cents.  Clerks,  railroad  hands,  seamstresses,  waitresses 
— all  were  infected  by  the  mania.  In  vain  the  wheat 
provinces  pointed  out  that  one  single  year's  wheat 
crop  would  exceed  in  value  all  the  gold  mined  in  the 
North  in  fifty  years.  Nothing  could  stem  the  mad- 
ness. You  could  pave  Kootenay  with  the  fortunes 
lost  there  or  go  to  Klondike  by  the  bones  of  the  dead 
bleaching  the  trail. 

But  behold  the  unexpected  Effect!  Adventurers 
from  all  the  earth  rushing  to  the  gold  mines  passed 
over  unpeopled  plains  of  seeming  boundlessness. 
Land  in  the  western  states  was  selling  at  this  time 
at  from  seventeen  dollars  in  the  remote  sections  to 
seventy-five  dollars  an  acre  near  markets.  Here  was 
land  in  these  Canadian  plains  to  be  had  for  nothing 
but  the  preemption  fee  of  ten  dollars  and  three  years' 
residence. 

*'I  didn't  take  up  a  homestead  meaning  to  farm  it," 
said  a  disappointed  fortune  seeker  to  me  on  the  banks 
of  the  Saskatchewan.  "I  did  it  because  I  was  dead 
broke,  and  it  seemed  to  me  the  easiest  way  to  make 
three  thousand  dollars.  I  could  earn  three  dollars  a 
day  well-driving,  and  then  at  the  end  of  my  home- 


70     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

stead  term  sell  this  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres  foJ 
three  thousand  dollars." 

Do  you  appreciate  the  amazing  optimistic  con- 
fidence of  this  bankrupt  argonaut?  We  could  not 
sell  that  land  for  fifty  cents  an  acre.  To  use  the 
words  of  a  former  Minister  of  the  Interior,  "We  could 
not  bring  settlers  in  by  the  scruff  of  the  neck  and 
dump  them  on  the  land."  (There  had  been  fewer  than 
two  thousand  immigrants  the  year  that  minister  made 
that  apology  for  hard  times  to  an  audience  in  Winni- 
peg.) But  this  penniless  settler  had  seen  it  happen 
in  his  own  home  state  of  Iowa.  He  had  seen  land  in- 
crease in  value  from  nothing  an  acre  to  ten  dollars 
and  twenty  dollars  and  seventy-five  dollars  and  one 
hundred  dollars,  and  he  sat  him  down  on  the  bare 
prairie  in  a  tar-papered  shanty  to  help  the  same 
process  along  in  Canada.  He  never  had  the  faintest 
shadow  of  a  doubt  of  his  hopes  materializing.  He 
had  gambled  on  the  gold  and  he  had  lost ;  and  behold 
him  casting  another  throw  of  the  dice  in  the  face  of 
Fate,  and  gambling  on  the  land ;  and  please  note — ^he 
won  out.  He  was  one  of  the  multitude  who  won  out 
of  the  land  what  they  had  lost  on  gold — ^who  plowed 
out  of  the  prairie  what  they  had  sunk  in  a  hole  In  the 
ground  in  a  mine ! 

Another  twist  of  the  capricious  Wheel  of  Fate !  We 
didn't  send  Clifford  Sifton  down  from  the  West  to 
boom  Canada.    We  didn't  know  a  boom  was  coming. 


AMERICANIZATION  71 

Nobody  saw  it.  Clifford  Sifton  was  one  of  the  young- 
est Cabinet  Ministers  ever  appointed  in  Canada. 
There  was  a  fight  on  between  the  Province  of  Mani- 
toba and  the  Dominion  government  as  to  the  right  of 
the  province  to  aboHsh  separate  schools.  Had  the 
province  exceeded  its  rights?  The  dispute  was  non- 
religious  at  first,  but  finally  developed  into  a  bitter 
Catholic  versus  Protestant  controversy.  Not  all  Prot- 
estants wanted  non-religious  schools;  but  when  Cath- 
olic Quebec  said  that  Protestant  Manitoba  should  not 
have  non-religious  schools,  a  furious  little  tempest 
waxed  in  a  furious  little  teapot.  The  entrenched  gov- 
ernment of  Sir  John  Macdonald,  who  had  died  some 
few  years  previously,  went  down  in  defeat  before 
Laurier,  the  Liberal,  the  champion  of  Quebec  and  at 
the  same  time  the  defender  of  Manitoba  rights.  Car- 
dinal Merry  del  Val  came  from  Rome,  and  the  dispute 
was  literally  squelched.  It  was  never  settled  and  comes 
up  again  to  this  day ;  but  the  point  was  the  champion 
of  Manitoba,  Clifford  Sifton,  entered  the  Dominion 
Cabinet  just  as  the  Klondike  boom  broke. 

He  saw  the  backwash  of  disappointed  gold  seekers. 
He  realized  the  enormous  possibilities  of  free  advertis- 
ing for  Canada,  and  he  launched  such  a  campaign  of 
colonization  for  Canada  as  the  most  daring  optimist 
hardly  dreamed.  Agents  were  appointed  in  every 
hamlet  and  city  and  town  in  the  western  states — espe- 
cially those  states  like  Iowa  and  Ilhnois  and  Minne- 


72    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

sota  and  Wisconsin,  where  land  was  becoming  high 
priced.  The  personal  testimony  of  successful  farmers 
was  bill-posted  from  station  platform  to  remotest 
barb-wire  fence.  The  country  was  literally  combed  by 
Sifton  agents.  Big  land  companies  which  had  already 
exploited  colonization  schemes  in  the  western  states 
pricked  up  their  ears  and  sent  agents  to  spy  out  the 
land.  Those  agents  may  have  deluded  themselves  that 
they  went  to  Canada  secretly ;  it  is  a  safe  wager  that 
Sifton's  agents  prodded  them  to  activity  at  one  end 
and  Sifton's  agents  caught  and  piloted  and  plied  them 
with  facts  at  the  other  end.  I  know  of  land  that  Eng^ 
lish  colonization  companies  had  failed  to  sell  at  fiftj 
cents  an  acre  that  was  sold  at  this  time  to  these  Ameri^ 
can  companies  at  five  dollars  and  resold  by  them  ai 
fourteen  dollars  to  thirty  dollars. 

Such  profits  are  the  best  advertisement  for  a  propa- 
ganda. There  followed  a  land  boom  compared  to 
which  the  gold  boom  had  been  mild.  American  settlers 
came  in  special  cars,  in  special  trains,  in  relays  of  spe- 
cial trains.  Before  Canada  had  wakened  up  to  it  fifty 
thousand  American  settlers  had  trekked  across  the  bor- 
der. You  met  them  in  Peace  River.  You  met  them  at 
Athabasca.  You  met  them  on  far  reaches  of  the  Sas- 
katchewan. And  land  jumped  in  value  from  five  dol- 
lars to  fifteen  dollars,  from  fifteen  dollars  to  thirty 
dollars  an  acre.  When  Canada's  yearly  immigration 
reached  the  proportions  of  four  hundred  thousand — 


AMERICANIZATION  73 

half  Americans — it  is  not  exaggerating  to  say  the 
prairie  took  fire.  Villages  grew  into  cities  overnight. 
Edmonton  and  Calgary  and  Moose  Jaw  and  Regina — 
formerly  jumping-off  places  into  a  no-man's-land — 
became  metropolitan  cities  of  twenty-five  to  fifty  thou- 
sand people.  If  every  American  settler  averaged 
fifteen  hundred  dollars  on  his  person  at  this  period — 
as  customs  entries  prove — it  may  be  confidently  set 
down  that  his  value  as  a  producer  and  worker  was  an- 
other fifteen  hundred  dollars.  Wheat  exports  jumped 
to  over  one  hundred  million  dollars  a  year.  Flour  mills 
and  elevators  financed  by  western  American  capital 
strung  across  the  prairie  like  beads  on  a  string. 

If  this  was  an  "Americanizing  of  Canada,"  it  was 
not  a  bad  thing.  Every  part  of  Canada  felt  the  quick- 
ened pulse.  Two  more  transcontinental  railroads  had 
to  be  built.  All-red  routes  of  round-the-globe  steam 
ships  were  established;  all-red  round-the-world  cables 
were  laid.  The  quickened  pulse  was  Canada's  passing 
from  hobble-de-hoy  adolescence  with  a  chip  on  the 
shoulder  and  a  tremor  in  the  throat  to  big  strong, 
silent,  self-confident  manhood. 

John  Bull  is  a  curious  and  dour  foster  father  in 
some  of  his  moods.  He  never  really  wakened  up  to 
Canada  as  a  desirable  place  for  his  numerous  family  to 
settle  till  he  saw  Jonathan's  coat  tails  going  over  the 
fence  of  the  border — till  somebody  began  to  howl 
about  "the  Americanizing  of  Canada."     Then,  in  the 


74     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

words  of  the  illustrious  Governor-General,  "what  was 
good  enough  for  Americans  was  good  enough"  for 
him.  Clifford  Sifton's  agents  had  been  combing  the 
United  Kingdom  as  they  had  combed  the  western 
states.  British  immigration  jumped  from  almost 
nothing  to  a  total  of  687,067  in  ten  years — with  accel- 
erating totals  every  year  since. 

If  this  was  "the  Americanizing  of  Canada,"  it  was 
a  good  thing  for  the  Dominion. 


in 


There  was  another  feature  to  the  tidal  wave  of  four 
hundred  thousand  immigrants  a  year.  The  American  Is 
a  born  pioneer,  a  born  gambler,  a  born  adventurer.  The 
Englishman  Is  a  steady-going,  dogged-as-does-It  plod- 
der. The  American  will  risk  two  dollars  on  the  chance  of 
making  ten  dollars ;  he  often  loses  the  two  dollars,  and 
he  often  makes  the  ten  dollars ;  from  his  general  pros- 
perity, I  should  say  the  latter  results  oftener  than  the 
former;  but  the  American  never  In  the  least  minds 
blazing  the  trail  and  stumping  his  toe  and  coming  a 
hard  fall.  John  Bull  does.  He  takes  himself  horribly 
seriously.  He  will  never  risk  two  dollars  to  gain  ten 
dollars.  He  will  not,  in  fact,  spend  the  two  dollars  till 
he  is  sure  of  four  per  cent,  on  it.  Four  per  cent,  on 
two  dollars  and  ten  dollars  on  two  dollars  do  not  be- 
long to  the  same  category  of  investment.     Jonathan 


AMERICANIZATION  75 

makes  the  ideal  pioneer;  John  Bull,  the  ideal  perma- 
nent settler  who  comes  in  and  buys  from  the  pioneer. 

If  this,  too,  be  "the  Americanizing  of  Canada,"  it 
has  been  a  good  thing  for  the  country. 

To  be  sure,  there  have  been  hideous  horrible  abuses. 
The  real  estate  boom  reached  the  proportions  of  a 
fevered  madness  before  it  collapsed.  Americans 
bought  ranches  for  five  dollars  an  acre  and  resold  them 
as  rasx^nches  for  fifty  dollars  to  young  Englishmen 
who  will  never  make  a  cent  on  their  investment ;  chiefly 
because  fruit  trees  take  from  five  to  ten  years  to  come 
to  maturity,  and  because  fruit  must  be  near  a  market, 
and  because  only  an  expert  can  succeed  at  fruit. 

If  ever  wildcat  flourished  in  a  gold  camp  or  gam- 
bling joint,  and  that  wildcat  did  not  hie  to  Canada 
when  the  real  estate  boom  broke  loose,  the  wildcat  spe- 
cies not  in  evidence  was  too  rare  to  be  classified.  Prop- 
erty in  small  cities  sold  at  New  York  and  Chicago 
values.  Suburban  lots  were  staked  out  round  small 
towns  in  areas  for  a  London  or  a  Paris,  and  the  lots 
were  sold  on  instalment  plan  to  small  investors,  many 
of  whom  bought  in  hope  of  resale  before  payments 
could  accrue.  City  taxes  for  these  suburban  improve- 
ments increased  to  a  great  burden.  Fortunes  were 
made  and  lost  overnight.  Railroad  bonds  were 
guaranteed  plentifully  enough  to  pave  the  prairie. 
All  this  applies  chiefly  to  city  real  estate.  In- 
flation beyond  investment  basis  never  touched  farm 


76    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

lands;  but  as  a  prominent  editor  remarked,  "No  fool 
thing  that  ever  failed  was  half  as  improbable  as  the 
fool  things  that  have  succeeded.  Men  have  literally 
been  kicked  into  fortunes ;  and  the  caref ulest  man  has 
often  been  the  biggest  fool  by  not  biting  till  the  last." 

The  boom,  of  course,  burst  of  its  own  inflation ;  but 
it  is  worthy  of  note  that  the  year  the  boom  collapsed 
immigration  reached  its  highest  figure — four  hundred 
thousand.  Whether  the  boom  was  good  or  bad  for 
Canada  is  hard  to  determine.  It  left  a  great  many 
fortunes  in  its  wake  and  a  great  many  wrecks;  but 
naturally  it  did  for  the  country  what  years  of  hope, 
years  of  dogged  silent  work,  years  of  self-confidence 
could  not  do — it  jolted  Canada  and  the  world  into  a 
consciousness  of  the  Dominion's  possibilities.  It  is  like 
the  true  story  of  the  finding  of  coal  on  Vancouver 
Island — a  miner  stubbed  his  toe  and  lo,  a  clod  of  earth 
split  into  a  seam  of  shining  worth ! 

Practically  the  very  same  story  of  the  advent  of 
American  energy  and  daring  and  optimism  into  the 
lumber  industry  of  Canada  could  be  told ;  but  it  is  the 
same  story  as  of  the  mines  and  the  land,  except  that 
the  Canadians  on  the  ground  first  reaped  larger 
profits.  A  few  years  ago  scarcely  an  acre  in  British 
Columbia  was  owned  by  interests  outside  the  province. 
To-day  as  far  north  as  Prince  Rupert  the  great  lum- 
bermen of  the  United  States  own  the  timber  limits. 
Canadians  bought  these  lands  round  four  dollars  and 


AMERICANIZATION  77 

five  dollars  an  acre.  They  sold  at  from  one  hundred 
dollars  to  one  thousand  dollars.  One  understands  why 
American  lumbermen  to-day  demand  low  tariff  on  Ca- 
nadian lumber.  East  of  the  Rockies  from  Edmonton 
to  Port  Arthur  the  fringe  of  timber  along  the  great 
rivers  and  lakes  is  owned  by  operators  of  Wisconsin 
and  Louisiana.  In  Quebec  the  most  valuable  pulp 
wood  limits — the  last  of  the  great  pulp  wood  limits  on 
the  continent — are  owned  by  New  York  interests. 
Undoubtedly  all  this  means  "the  Americanizing  of 
Canada"  industrially.  Will  it  result  in  the  entrance 
of  Big  Business  into  politics  ?  That  is  hard  to  answer. 
The  door  is  not  wide  open  to  Big  Business  in  politics 
for  reasons  that  will  appear  in  an  account  of  how 
Canada  is  governed.  If  Americans  have  entered  so 
powerfully  into  Canadian  industrial  life,  why  was  reci- 
procity rejected?  That,  too,  is  an  interesting  story 
by  itself. 

There  is  one  subject  on  which  Canada's  inconsist- 
ency regarding  "Americanizing  influences'*  is  almost 
laughable.  It  is  the  subject  of  the  influence  of  period- 
ical literature.  Canadians  are  great  lip-loyalists,  but 
in  all  the  history  of  Canada  they  have  never  accorded 
support  to  a  national  magazine  that  enabled  that  mag- 
azine to  become  worthy  of  the  name.  Facts  are  very 
damning  testimony  here.  Very  well — then — ^let  us 
have  the  facts !  There  is  one  American  weekly  which 
has  a  larger  circulation  in  every  city  in  Canada  than 


78     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

any  daily  in  any  city  in  Canada.  Of  the  American 
monthlies  of  first  rank,  there  is  hardly  one  that  has  not 
a  larger  circulation  in  Canada  than  any  Canadian 
magazine  has  ever  enjoyed.  Even  Canadian  news- 
papers are  served  by  American  syndicates  and  press 
associations.  The  influence  of  this  flood  of  American 
thought  in  the  currents  of  Canadian  thought  can  not 
be  exaggerated.  It  is  subtle.  It  is  intangible.  It  is 
irresistible.  What  Americans  are  thinking  about,  Ca- 
nadians unconsciously  are  thinking,  too.  The  influence 
makes  for  a  community  of  sentiment  that  political  dif- 
ferences can  never  disrupt,  and  it  is  a  good  thing  for 
the  race  that  this  is  so.  It  helps  to  explain  why  there 
is  no  fort  between  the  two  nations  for  three  thousand 
miles. 

It  may  also  be  added  that  no  Canadian  writer  can 
get  access  to  the  public  in  book  form  except  through 
an  American  publisher.  Unless  the  author  assumes 
the  cost  or  risk  of  publication,  the  Canadian  publisher 
will  rarely  issue  a  book  on  his  own  responsibility.  He 
sends  the  book  to  New  York  or  to  London,  and  from 
New  York  or  London  buys  plates  or  sheets.  This 
compels  the  Canadian  book  to  have  an  Imperial  or  an 
American  appeal.  In  literature,  the  modus  operandi 
works  ;  for  the  appeal  is  universal ;  but  one  might  con- 
ceive of  conditions  demanding  a  purely  national  Cana- 
dian treatment,  which  New  York  or  London  publishers 
would  not  issue,  when  Canada  would  literally  be  dam- 


AMERICANIZATION  79 

ming  the  springs  of  her  national  literature.  Canada 
considers  her  population  too  small  to  support  a  purely 
national  literature.  Not  so  reasons  Belgium  of  smaller 
population;  nor  Ireland;  nor  Scotland.  The  fault 
here  is  primarily  in  the  copyright  law.  A  book  pub- 
lished first  In  the  United  States  gains  international 
copyright.  A  book  published  first  in  Canada  may  be 
pirated  in  the  United  States  or  England ;  and  on  such 
printed  editions  no  payment  can  be  collected  by  the 
author.  The  profits  in  England  and  the  United  States 
were  lost  to  authors  on  two  of  the  most  popular  books 
ever  published  by  Canadians.* 


*  Charles  Gordon's  Black  Rock,  pirated  from  his  own  pub- 
lisher, sale  half  a  million;  Kirby's  Chien  d'Or,  sale  one  mil- 
lion. 


CHAPTER  V 


WHY  RECIPKOCITY  WAS  REJECTED 


If  American  capital  and  American  enterprise  dom- 
inate Canadian  mines,  Canadian  timber  interests, 
Canadian  fisheries ;  if  American  elevators  are  strung 
across  the  grain  provinces  and  American  flour  mills 
have  branches  established  from  Winnipeg  to  Calgary ; 
if  American  implement  companies  and  packing  inter- 
ests now  universally  control  subsidiaries  in  Canada — 
why  was  reciprocity  rejected?  If  it  is  good  for  Can- 
ada that  American  capital  establish  big  paper  mills  in 
Quebec,  why  is  it  not  good  for  Canada  to  have  free 
ingress  for  her  paper-mill  products  to  American  mar- 
kets? The  same  of  the  British  Columbia  shingle  in- 
dustry, of  copper  ores,  of  wheat  and  flour  products? 
If  it  is  good  for  the  Canadian  producer  to  buy  in  the 
cheapest  market  and  to  sell  in  the  highest,  why  was 
reciprocity  rejected?  Implements  for  the  farm  south 
of  the  border  are  twenty-five  per  cent,  cheaper  than  in 
the  Canadian  Northwest.  Canadian  wheat  milled  in 
Minneapolis  enjoys  a  lower  freight  rate  and  conse- 

80 


WHY  RECIPROCITY   WAS   REJECTED     81 

quentlj  a  higher  market  than  Canadian  wheat  milled 
in  Europe,  as  sixteen  and  twenty-two  are  to  forty  and 
fifty  cents — the  former  being  the  freight  cost  to  a 
Minneapolis  mill ;  the  latter,  the  freight  cost  to  a  Eu- 
ropean mill.    Why,  then,  was  reciprocity  rejected? 

From  1867,  Canada  had  been  intermittently  seek- 
ing reciprocity  with  the  United  States.  Now,  at  last, 
the  offer  of  it  came  to  her  unsolicited.  Why  did  she 
reject  it  by  a  vote  that  would  have  been  unanimous 
but  for  the  prairie  provinces?  Though  the  desire  for 
reciprocity  with  the  United  States  was  exploited  polit- 
ically more  by  the  Liberals — or  low-tariff  party — than 
by  the  Conservatives — the  high-tariff  party — both 
had  repeatedly  sent  official  and  unofficial  emissaries  to 
Washington  seeking  tariff  concessions.  Tariff  con- 
cessions were  a  plank  in  the  Liberal  platform  from  the 
days  of  Alexander  MacKenzie.  They  were  not  a 
plank  in  the  platform  of  the  Conservative  party  for 
the  sole  reason  that  the  high  tariff  on  the  American 
side  forced  a  high  tariff  in  self-defense  on  the  Cana- 
dian side.  Close  readers  of  Sir  John  Macdonald's  life 
must  have  been  amazed  to  learn  that  one  of  his  very 
first  visits  to  Washington — contemporaneous  with  the 
Civil  War  period,  when  the  United  States  were  just 
launching  out  on  a  high-tariff  policy — was  for  the 
purpose  of  seeking  tariff  favors  for  Canada.  Failing 
to  obtain  even  a  favorable  hearing,  he  observed  the 
high-tariff  trend  at  Washington,  took  a  leaf  out  of 


82     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

his  rival's  book  and  returned  to  Canada  to  launch  the 
high-tariff  policy  that  dominated  the  Dominion  for 
thirty  years.  Alexander  MacKenzie,  Blake,  Mowat, 
George  Brown,  Laurier,  Cartwright,  Fielding — all  the 
dyed-in-the-wool  ultra  Whigs  of  the  Liberal  party — 
practically  held  their  party  together  for  the  thirty 
lean  years  out-of-office  by  promises  and  repeated  prom- 
ises of  reciprocity  with  the  United  States  the  instant 
they  came  into  office.  They  never  seemed  to  doubt  that 
the  instant  they  did  come  into  office  and  proffered  reci- 
procity to  the  United  States  the  offer  would  be  accepted 
and  reciprocated.  It  may  be  explained  that  all  these 
old-line  Liberals  from  MacKenzie  to  Laurier  were  free- 
traders of  the  Cobden-Bright  school.  They  believed 
in  free  trade  not  only  as  an  economic  policy  but  as  a 
religion  to  prevent  the  plundering  of  the  poor  by  the 
rich,  of  the  many  by  the  few.  One  has  only  to  turn 
to  the  back  files  of  the  Montreal  Witness  and  Toronto 
Globe  from  1871  to  1895 — the  two  Liberal  organs 
that  voiced  the  extreme  free-trade  propaganda — ^to 
find  this  political  note  emphasized  almost  as  a  fanati- 
cal religion.  The  high-tariff  party  were  not  only 
morally  wrong;  they  were  predestinedly  damned.  I 
remember  that  in  my  own  home  both  organs  were  re- 
vered next  to  the  Bible,  and  this  free-trade  doctrine 
was  accepted  as  unquestionably  as  the  Shorter 
Catechism. 


WHY   RECIPROCITY   WAS   REJECTED     83 

n 

Well — ^Laurier  came  to  power ;  and  he  gathered  into 
his  Cabinet  all  the  grand  old  guard  free-traders  still 
alive.  As  soon  as  the  Manitoba  School  Question  was 
settled  Laurier  put  his  Manchester  school  of  politics 
into  active  practice  by  granting  tariff  concessions  on 
British  imports.  The  act  was  hailed  by  free-trade 
England  as  a  tribute  of  statesmanship.  Laurier  and 
Fielding  were  recognized  as  men  of  the  hour.  The 
next  step  was  to  carry  out  the  promises  of  reciprocity 
with  the  United  States.  One  can  imagine  Sir  John 
Macdonald,  the  old  chieftain  of  the  high-tariff  Con- 
servatives, turning  over  in  his  grave  with  a  sardonic 
grin — "Not  so  fast,  my  Little  Sirs!"  When  twitted 
on  the  floor  of  the  House  over  a  high  tariff  oppressing 
farmers  and  favoring  factories,  Sir  John  had  always 
disclaimed  being  a  high-tariff  man.  He  would  have  a 
low  tariff  for  the  United  States,  if  the  United  States 
would  grant  Canada  a  low  tariff — he  had  answered; 
but  the  United  States  would  not  grant  Canada  any 
tariff  concessions.  And  the  grand  old  guard  of 
Whigs  had  jeered  back  that  he  was  "a  compromiser" 
and  "a  trimmer,"  who  tacked  to  every  breeze  and 
never  met  an  issue  squarely  in  his  life. 

If  the  Liberals  had  not  been  absolutely  sincere  men, 
they  would  not  have  ridden  to  such  a  hard  and  unex- 


84.     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

pected  fall.  They  would,  like  Sir  John,  have  trimmed 
to  the  wind;  but  they  believed  in  free  trade  as  they 
believed  in  righteousness ;  and  they  furthermore  be- 
lieved all  they  had  to  do  was  to  ask  for  it  to  get  it. 
Blake  had  retired  from  Canadian  politics.  George 
Brown  of  the  Globe  was  dead;  Alexander  MacKen- 
zie  had  long  since  passed  away  ;  but  the  old  guard  ral- 
lied to  the  reciprocity  cry.  International  negotiations 
opened  at  Quebec.  They  were  not  a  failure.  They 
were  worse  than  a  failure.  They  were  a  joke.  High 
tariff  was  at  its  zenith  in  the  United  States.  Every 
one  of  the  American  commissioners  was  a  dyed-in-thc'- 
wool  high-tariff  man.  It  would  be  an  even  wager  that 
not  one  man  among  them  had  ever  heard  of  the  Cob- 
den-Bright  Manchester  School  of  Free  Trade,  by 
which  the  Laurier  government  swore  as  by  an  unerr- 
ing Gospel.  They  had  heard  of  McKinley  and  of 
Mark  Hanna,  but  who  and  what  were  Cobden  and 
Bright.''  What  relation  were  Cobden  and  Bright  to 
the  G.  O.  P..'*  The  negotiations  were  a  joke  to  the 
United  States  and  a  humiliation  to  Canada.  They 
were  adjourned  from  Quebec  to  Washington;  and 
from  Washington,  Fielding  and  Cartwright  re- 
turned puzzled  and  sick  at  heart.  They  could 
obtain  not  one  single  solitary  tariff  concession. 
They  found  it  was  not  a  case  of  theoretical  politics. 
It  was  a  case  of  quid  pro  quo  for  a  trade.  What  had 
Canada  to  offer  from  1893  to  1900  that  the  United 


WHY  RECIPROCITY   WAS   REJECTED     85 

States  had  not  within  her  own  borders?  Canada 
wanted  to  buy  cheaper  boots  and  cheaper  implements 
and  cheaper  factory  products  generally.  She  wanted 
a  higher  market  for  her  wheat  and  her  meat  and  her 
fish  and  her  crude  metals  and  her  lumber.  She  would 
knock  off  her  tariff  on  American  factory  products,  if 
the  United  States  would  knock  off  her  tariff  against 
Canadian  farm  products.  One  can  scarcely  imagine 
Republican  politicians  going  to  American  farmers  for 
votes  on  that  platform.  What  had  Canada  to  offer.? 
She  had  meat  and  wheat  and  fish  and  timber  and  crude 
metals.  Yes ;  but  from  1893  to  1900  Uncle  Sam  had 
more  meat  and  wheat  and  fish  and  timber  and  crude 
metals  than  he  could  digest  industrially  himself.  Look 
at  the  exact  figures  of  the  case !  You  could  buy  pulp 
timber  lands  in  the  Adirondacks  at  from  fifty  cents 
to  four  dollars  an  acre.  You  could  buy  timber  limits 
that  were  almost  limitless  in  the  northwestern  states 
for  a  homesteader's  relinquishment  fee.  Kansas  farm- 
ers fed  their  wheat  to  hogs  because  it  did  not  pay  to 
ship  it.  Texas  steers  sold  low  as  five  dollars  on  the 
hoof.  Crude  metals  were  such  a  drug  on  the  market 
that  the  coinage  of  free  silver  was  suggested  as  a 
panacea.  Canada  hadn't  anything  that  the  United 
States  wanted  badly  enough  for  any  quid  pro  quo  in 
tariff  concessions. 

This  was  the  time  that  Uncle  Sam  rejected  reci- 
procity. 


86    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

Fielding,  Laurier  and  Cartwright  came  home  pro- 
foundly disappointed  men  ;  and — as  stated  before — 
old  Sir  John  may  have  turned  over  in  his  grave  with 
a  sardonic  grin. 

When  Sir  John  had  launched  the  Canadian  Pacific 
Railroad  to  link  Nova  Scotia  with  British  Columbia, 
when  his  government  to  huge  land  grants  had  added 
cash  loans,  when  he  had  offered  bonuses  for  factories 
and  subsidies  for  steamships — no  one  had  sent  home 
such  bitter  shafts  of  criticism  as  these  old-guard  Lib- 
erals hungry  for  office.  Why  give  away  public  lands  ? 
Why  push  railroads  in  advance  of  settlement?  Why 
build  railroads  when  there  were  no  terminals,  and 
terminals  when  there  were  no  steamships?  Why  sub- 
sidize steamships,  when  there  were  no  markets?  Was 
it  not  more  natural  to  trade  with  neighbors  a  hand- 
shake across  the  way  than  with  strange  nations  across 
the  ocean?  I  have  heard  these  barbed  interrogations 
launched  by  Liberals  at  Conservatives  with  such  bit- 
terness that  the  wives  of  Conservative  members  would 
not  bow  to  the  wives  of  Liberal  members  met  in  the 
corridors  of  Parliament. 

Now  mark  what  happened  when  the  free-trade  Lib- 
erals found  they  could  obtain  no  tariff  concessions 
from  the  United  States!  They  had  gibed  Sir  John 
for  committing  the  country  to  one  transcontinental 
railroad.     They  now  launched  two  more  transconti- 


WHY  RECIPROCITY  WAS   REJECTED     87 

nental  railroads — east  and  west,  not  north  and  south. 
Subsidies  were  poured  into  the  lap  of  steamship  com- 
panies to  attract  them  to  Canadian  ports  ;  and  thirty- 
eight  millions  in  all  were  spent  improving  navigation 
in  the  St.  Lawrence.  Wherever  Clifford  Sifton  sent 
agents  to  drum  up  settlers  trade  agents  were  sent  to 
drum  up  markets.  Then — as  Sir  Richard  Cart- 
wright  acknowledged — the  Liberals  were  traveling  in 
the  most  tremendous  luck.  An  era  of  almost  opulent 
prosperity  seemed  to  come  over  the  whole  world.  Gold 
was  discovered  in  Klondike.  Grermany  opened  unex- 
pected markets  for  copper  ores.  Number  One  Hard 
Wheat  became  famous  in  Europe.  Canadian  apples, 
Canadian  butter,  Canadian  meats  began  to  gather  a 
fame  of  their  own.  Canada  was  no  longer  dependent 
on  American  markets.  There  was  more  demand  for 
Canadian  products  in  European  markets  than  could 
be  filled.  Then  came  the  tidal  wave  of  colonists.  This 
created  an  exhaustless  market  for  farm  produce 
within  Canada's  borders,  and  within  three  years — in 
spite  of  the  tariff — imports  of  manufacturers  from 
the  United  States  doubled.  American  factories  and 
flour  mills  and  lumber  mills  sprang  up  on  the  Cajia- 
dian  side  by  magic.  In  this  era  Canada  was  actuallj' 
importing  ten  million  dollars'  worth  of  food  a  year 
for  one  western  province,  and  the  cost  of  living  in 
ten  years  increased  fifty-one  per  cent. 


88     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

in 

Came  a  turn  In  the  wheel !  The  wheel  has  a  tricky 
way  of  turning  up  the  unexpected  between  nations. 
A  new  era  had  come  to  the  United  States.  Kansas  waa 
no  longer  feeding  wheat  to  hogs.  In  fact,  the  de- 
crease in  wheat  exports  had  become  so  alarming  that 
men  like  Hill  of  Great  Northern  fame  and  James 
Wilson,  Secretary  of  Agriculture,  actually  predicted 
that  there  would  come  a  day  of  bread  famine  in  the 
United  States.  The  population  of  the  United  States 
had  grown  faster  than  the  country's  production  of 
food.  There  was  an  appalling  decrease  of  meat  ani- 
mals. American  packers  were  establishing  branch 
houses  all  through  Canada.  As  for  metals,  with  the 
superabundance  of  gold  from  Yukon  and  Nevada, 
there  did  not  seem  any  limit  to  the  world's  power  to 
absorb  what  was  produced.  The  almost  limitless  tim- 
ber lands  of  the  northwestern  states  passed  into  the 
hands  of  the  great  trusts.  Buyers  of  print  paper  in 
the  United  States  became  alarmed  at  the  impending 
shortage  of  wood  pulp. 

It  was  not  unnatural  that  the  same  thought  came 
to  many  minds  in  the  United  States  at  once.  "If  we 
had  free  trade,  we  could  bring  Canada's  raw  products 
in  and  build  up  our  factories  here  instead  of  in  Can- 
ada," was  the  gist  of  the  manufacturer's  argument. 
*'If  we  had  free  trade,  it  would  reduce  the  cost  of  liv- 


WHY  RECIPROCITY   WAS   REJECTED     89 

ing,"  was  the  gist  of  the  city  consumer's  argument. 
Canadian  lumber,  Canadian  meat,  Canadian  wheat 
could  be  brought  across  and  manufactured  on  the 
American  side.  For  the  first  time  the  American  manu- 
facturer became  a  free  trader.  Practically  there  was 
only  one  section  in  the  United  States  opposed  to  reci- 
procity with  Canada;  that  was  the  American  farmer, 
and  his  opposition  was  more  negative  than  positive. 

It  is  hard  to  say  who  voiced  the  desire  for  reci- 
procity first.  Possibly  the  buyers  of  print  paper. 
At  all  events,  there  was  at  Ottawa  a  Governor-General 
of  the  Manchester  School  of  Free  Trade.  There  was 
editing  the  Toronto  Globe — the  main  Liberal  organ — a 
worthy  successor  of  George  Brown  as  an  exponent  of 
the  Manchester  School  of  Free  Trade.  Shortly  after 
this  editor — a  man  of  brilliant  forceful  character — 
had  met  President  Taft  and  Joe  Cannon  in  Washing- 
ton, the  Governor-General  of  Canada  was  the  guest  of 
Governor  Hughes  at  Albany  and  there  met  President 
Taft.  Of  the  old  guard  of  free  traders,  there  were 
still  a  few  in  Laurier's  Cabinet,  and  Laurier  himself 
was  as  profoundly  and  sincerely  a  free  trader  in  power 
as  he  had  been  out  of  office.  Enemies  aver  that  the 
Laurier  government  now  launched  reciprocity  to  di- 
vert public  attention  from  criticism  of  the  railroad 
policy,  in  which  there  had  undoubtedly  been  great 
incompetency  and  gross  extravagance — an  extrava- 
gance more  of  a  recklessly  prosperous  era  than  of  dis- 


90     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

honesty — ^but  this  motive  can  hardly  be  accepted.  If 
Laurier  had  launched  reciprocity  as  a  political  dodge, 
he  would  have  sounded  public  opinion  and  learned  that 
it  was  no  longer  with  him  on  tariff  concessions;  but 
because  he  was  absolutely  sincere  in  his  belief  in  the 
Cobden-Bright  Gospel  of  Free  Trade,  he  rode  for  a 
second  time  to  a  humiliating  fall.  A  trimmer  would 
have  sounded  public  opinion  and  pretended  to  lead  it 
while  really  following.  Laurier  believed  he  was  right 
and  launched  out  on  that  behef . 


IV 


There  was  probably  never  at  any  time  a  more  con- 
spicuous example  of  politicians  mistaking  a  rear  lan- 
tern for  a  headlight.  I  had  come  East  from  a  six 
months'  tour  of  the  northwestern  states  and  North- 
western Canada.  I  chanced  to  meet  a  magazine  editor 
who  for  twenty  years  had  been  the  closest  exponent  of 
Republican  politics  in  New  York.  The  Canadian  elec- 
tions were  to  be  held  that  very  day.  In  Canada  a 
party  does  not  launch  a  new  policy  like  reciprocity 
without  going  to  the  country  for  the  electorate's  ap- 
proval or  condemnation.  The  editor  asked  me  if  I 
would  mind  reading  over  a  ten-page  advance  editorial 
congratulating  both  countries  on  the  endorsation  of 
reciprocity.  I  was  paralyzed.  I  was  a  free  trader 
and  had  been  trained  to  love  and  revere  Laurier  from 


WHY  RECIPROCITY  WAS   REJECTED     91 

childhood;  but  I  knew  from  cursory  observation  in 
the  West  that  there  was  not  a  chance,  nor  the  shadow 
of  a  chance,  for  reciprocity  to  be  endorsed  by  the 
Canadian  people.  The  editor  would  not  believe  me. 
He  was  in  close  touch  with  Taft.  He  sat  up  over- 
night to  get  returns  from  Canada,  and  the  next  night 
I  left  for  Ottawa  to  get  the  views  of  Robert  Borden, 
Canada's  new  Conservative  Premier,  as  to  why  it  had 
happened. 

It  had  happened  because  it  could  not  have  happened 
otherwise,  though  neither  President  Taft  nor  Pre- 
mier Laurier,  neither  the  editor  of  the  Globe  nor  the 
free-trade  Governor-General  seemed  to  have  the  faint- 
est idea  what  was  happening.  Canada  rejected  reci- 
procity now  for  precisely  the  same  reason  that  Uncle 
Sam  had  rejected  reciprocity  ten  years  before — be- 
cause Uncle  Sam  had  no  quid  pro  quo,  no  equivalent 
in  values  to  ojffer,  which  Canada  wanted  badly  enough 
to  make  trade  concessions.  Said  Canada:  you  have 
exhausted  your  own  lumber;  you  want  our  lumber; 
pay  for  it.  You  want  it  so  badly  that  you  will  ulti- 
mately put  lumber  on  the  free  list  without  any  con- 
cession from  us.  Meanwhile,  for  us  to  remove  the 
tariff  would  simply  lead  to  our  lumber  going  across 
the  line  to  be  manufactured.  It  would  build  up  your 
mills  instead  of  ours.  The  higher  you  keep  the  tariff 
ageunst  our  lumber  the  better  pleased  we'll  be;  for 
you  will  have  to  build  more  and  more  mills  on  our  side 


92     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

of  the  line.  We  are  even  prepared  to  put  an  export 
duty  on  logs  to  compel  you  to  keep  on  building  mills 
on  our  side  of  the  line.  This  was  the  argument  that 
swayed  and  won  the  vote  in  British  Columbia  and 
Quebec.  A  similar  argument  as  to  wheat  and  meat 
swayed  the  prairie  provinces  and  Ontario. 

From  ]\Iontreal  to  Vancouver  there  is  hardly  a  ham- 
let that  has  not  some  American  industry,  packing 
house,  lumber  mill,  flour  mill,  elevator,  machine  shop, 
motor  factory,  which  operates  on  the  Canadian  side  of 
the  border  because  the  tariff  wall  compels  it  to  do  so. 
These  industries  have  doubled  and  trebled  the  popula- 
tions of  cities  like  Montreal,  Hamilton,  Winnipeg, 
Vancouver,  Calgary,  Moose  Jaw.  Would  removal  of 
the  tariff  bring  more  industries  to  these  cities  or  move 
them  south  of  the  border.?  The  cities  voted  almost 
to  a  man  against  reciprocity. 

Allied  with  the  cities  were  the  great  transportation 
systems  running  east  and  west.  Reciprocity  to  divert 
traffic  north  and  south  seemed  a  menace  to  their  re- 
ceipts. To  a  man  these  systems  were  against  reci- 
procity. 

You  have  forced  us  to  work  out  our  own  Destiny, 
said  Canada.  Very  well — now  that  we  are  at  the  win- 
ning post,  don't  divert  us  from  the  goal!  We  love 
you  as  neighbors ;  we  welcome  you  as  settlers ;  we  em- 
brace you  as  investors ;  but  when  we  came  to  you,  you 
rejected  us.    Now  you  must  come  to  us ! 


WHY  RECIPROCITY   WAS   REJECTED     93 

Deep  beneath  all  the  jingoism  these  were  the  eco- 
nomic factors  that  rejected  reciprocity.  It  is  all  a 
curious  illustration  of  the  difference  between  practical 
and  theoretical  politics.  Theoretically  both  parties 
have  been  free  traders  in  Canada.  Practically^  free 
trade  had  thrown  them  both  down.  Theoretically 
Canada  rejects  reciprocity.  Practically  trade  across 
the  boundary  has  increased  one  hundred  per  cent, 
since  she  rejected  reciprocity.  Theoretically  Canada 
was  protecting  her  three  transcontinental  systems  when 
she  rejected  reciprocity.  Practically  the  growth  of 
lines  with  running  rights  across  the  boundary  has 
increased  from  sixteen  to  sixty-four  in  ten  years. 

When  American  industries  have  become  rooted  in 
Canadian  soil  beyond  possibility  of  transplanting,  no 
doubt  the  fear  will  be  removed ;  and  at  the  present  rate 
of  the  increase  of  trade  between  the  two  countries  the 
tariff  wall  must  become  an  anachronism,  if  it  be  not 
worn  down  by  sheer  force  of  trade  attrition. 

Comical  incidents  are  related  of  the  Canadian  fear 
in  individual  cases.  There  was  a  Scotch  school  trustee 
in  Calgary.  He  had  voted  Whig-Liberal-dyed-in-the- 
wool  free  trade  for  forty  years — from  the  traditions 
of  reciprocity  under  Alexander  MacKenzie.  A  Cana- 
dian flag  was  flying  above  the  fine  new  Calgary  school. 
The  Scotchman  was  going  to  the  polls  by  street-car. 
An  excursion  of  American  home  seekers  had  just  come 
in,  and  one  of  the  variety  to  essay  placing  an  Amer- 


94     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

ican  flag  on  the  pyramids  had  taken  a  glass  too  much. 
He  began  haranguing  the  street-car.  "So  that's  the 
old  Can-a-day  flag,"  said  he.  "You  jus'  wait  till 
to-morrow  and,  boys,  you'll  see  another  flag  above 
that  thar  school  'ouse !" 

Now  a  Scotchman  is  vera'  serious.  The  Scotch 
trustee  gave  one  glowering  look  at  that  drunken 
prophet ;  and  he  rang  the  street-car  bell ;  and  he  went 
at  the  patter  of  a  dead  run  to  the  polling  place ;  and 
for  the  first  time  in  his  life  he  voted,  not  Whig,  not 
free  trade,  not  reciprocity  and  Laurier,  but  Tory  and 
high  tariff.* 

It  should  be  added  here  that  the  tariff  reductions  on 
food  under  President  Wilson  have  justified  Canada's 
rejection  of  reciprocity.  Canadian  farm  products 
have  gained  freer  access  to  the  American  market  with- 
out a  quid  pro  quo. 


*  Opponents  of  reciprocity  in  the  United  States  made  skilful 
use  of  Canadian  touchiness  on  such  matters,  and  not  all  such 
expressions  as  that  quoted  above  were  spontaneous. — The 
Editor. 


CHAPTER  VI 


THE  COMING  OF  THE  ENGLISH 


For  a  hundred  years  England's  colonies  have  been 
distinctively  dependencies — self-governing  dependen- 
cies, if  you  will,  in  the  case  of  Canada  and  Australia — 
but  distinctively  dependent  on  the  Mother  Country 
for  protection  from  attack  by  land  and  sea.  Has  the 
day  come  when  these  colonies  are  to  be,  not  lesser,  but 
greater  nations — offshoots  of  the  parent  stock  but 
transcending  in  power  and  wealth  the  parent  stock — a 
United  Kingdom  of  the  Outer  Meres,  becoming  to 
America  and  Australasia  what  Great  Britain  has  been 
to  Europe? 

Ten  years  ago  this  question  would  have  been  consid- 
ered the  bumptious  presumption  of  flamboyant  fancy. 
It  isn't  so  considered  to-day.  Rather  than  a  flight  of 
fancy,  the  question  is  forced  on  thinking  minds  by  the 
hard  facts  of  the  multiplication  table.  Between  1897 
and  1911  there  came  to  Canada  723,424  British  colo- 
nists ;  and  since  1911  there  have  come  half  a  million 
more.   At  the  outbreak  of  the  war  settlers  of  purely 

95 


96     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

British  birth  were  pouring  into  Canada  at  the  rate  of 
two  hundred  thousand  a  year.  A  continuation  of  this 
immigration  means  that  in  half  a  century,  not  counting 
natural  increase,  there  will  be  as  many  colonists  of 
purely  British  birth  in  Canada  as  there  are  Americans 
west  of  the  Mississippi,  or  as  there  were  Englishmen  in 
England  in  the  days  of  Queen  Elizabeth.  It  means 
more — one-fourth  of  the  United  Kingdom  will  have 
been  transplanted  overseas.  If  there  be  any  doubt  as 
to  whether  the  transplanting  be  permanent,  it  should 
be  settled  by  homestead  entries.  In  one  era  of  some- 
thing less  than  three  years  out  of  351,530  men,  women 
and  children  who  came,  sixty  thousand  entered  for 
homesteads.  In  other  words,  if  each  householder  were 
married  and  had  a  family  of  four,  almost  the  entire 
immigration  of  351,530  was  absorbed  in  permanent 
tenure  by  the  land.  The  drifters,  the  floaters,  the  dis- 
inherited of  their  share  of  earth  became  landowners, 
proprietors  of  Canada  to  the  extent  of  one  hundred 
and  sixty  acres.  From  1897  to  1911  the  Canadian 
government  spent  $2,419,957  advertising  Canada  in 
England  and  paying  a  bonus  of  one  pound  per  capita 
to  steamship  agents  for  each  immigrant ;  so  that  each 
colonist  cost  the  Dominion  something  over  three  dol- 
lars. I  have  heard  immigration  officials  figure  how 
each  colonist  was  worth  to  the  country  as  a  producer 
fifteen  hundred  dollars  a  year.  This  is  an  excessive 
estimate,  but  the  bargain  was  a  good  one  for  Canada. 


THE    COMING    OF    THE    ENGLISH     97 

In  1901,  when  Canada's  population  was  five  millions, 
there  were  seven  hundred  thousand  people  of  British 
birth  in  the  Dominion ;  so  that  of  Canada's  present 
population  of  7,800,000,  there  are  in  the  Dominion  a 
million  and  a  half  people  of  British  birth.*  Averag- 
ing winter  with  summer  for  ten  years,  colonists  of 
British  birth  have  been  landing  on  Canada's  shores  at 
the  rate  of  three  hundred  a  day.  Canada's  natural 
increase  is  under  one  hundred  thousand  a  year.  Brit- 
ish colonists  are  to-day  yearly  outnumbering  Canada's 
natural  increase. 

Only  two  other  such  migrations  of  Saxon  blood  have 
taken  place  in  history:  when  the  Angles  and  Jutes 
and  Saxons  came  in  plunder  raids  to  English  shores 
at  the  dawn  of  the  Christian  Era ;  when  in  the  seven- 
teenth century  Englishmen  came  to  America ;  and  both 
these  tides  of  migration  were  as  a  drop  in  an  ocean 
wave  compared  to  the  numbers  of  English  born  now 
flooding  to  the  shores  of  Canada. 

Knowing  the  Viking  spirit  '^hat  rode  out  to  conquer 
the  very  elements  in  the  teeth  of  death,  it  is  easy  to 
look  back  and  realize  that  these  Angles  and  Jutes  and 
Saxons  were  bound  to  found  a  great  sea  empire.     So, 


*  I  have  variously  referred  to  Canada's  population  as  five 
million,  seven  million,  and  over  seven  million.  Five  million 
was  Canada's  population  before  the  great  influx  of  colonists 
began.  The  census  figures  of  1911  give  Canada's  population 
as  7,204,838.  Add  to  this  the  immigration  for  1912,  and  you 
get  the  Department  of  Labor  figures— 7,758,000.  If  you  add 
the  immigration  for  1913  the  total  must  be  close  on  8,000,000. 


98     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

too,  of  the  New  England  Puritans !  Men  who  sacri- 
ficed their  all  for  a  political  and  religious  belief  were 
bound  to  build  of  such  belief  foundation  for  a  sturdy 
nation  of  the  future.  It  is  easy  to  look  back  and  re- 
alize. It  is  hard  to  look  forward  with  eyes  that  see; 
but  one  must  be  a  very  opaque  thinker,  indeed,  not  to 
wonder  what  this  latest  vast  migration  of  Saxon  blood 
portends  for  future  empire.  The  Jutes  and  Angles 
and  Saxons  poured  into  ancient  Albion  for  just  one 
reason — to  acquire  each  for  his  own  freehold  of  land. 
Look  at  the  ancient  words !  Freehold  of  land !  For 
what  else  have  a  million  and  a  half  British  born  come 
to  the  free  homesteads  of  Canada.''  For  freehold  of 
land — land  unoppressed  by  taxes  for  war  lords ;  land 
unoppressed  by  tithes  for  landlord;  land  absolutely 
free  to  the  worker.  That  such  a  migration  should 
break  In  waves  over  Canadian  life  and  leave  it  un- 
touched, uninfluenced,  unswerved.  Is  as  inconceivable 
as  that  the  Jutes  and  Angles  and  Saxons  could  have 
settled  In  ancient  Albion  and  not  made  it  their  own. 


II 


For  years  Canada  was  regarded  chiefly  In  England 
as  a  dumping  ground  for  slums.  "You  have  broken 
your  mother's  heart,"  thundered  an  English  magis- 
trate to  a  young  culprit.  "You  have  sent  your  father 
in  sorrow  to  the  grave.    Why — I  ask  you — do  you  not 


THE    COMING   OF   THE    ENGLISH     99 

go  to  Canada  ?"  That  such  material  did  not  offer  the 
best  fiber  for  the  making  of  a  nation  in  Canada  did  not 
dawn  on  tliis  insular  magisterial  dignitary;  and  the 
sentiments  uttered  were  reflected  in  the  activities  of 
countless  philanthropies  that  seemed  to  think  the  por- 
cine could  be  transmogrified  into  the  human  by  a  sim- 
ple transfer  from  the  pig-sty  of  their  own  vices  and 
failure  to  the  free  untrammeled  life  of  a  colony.  For- 
tunately Canada  has  a  climate  that  kills  men  who  won't 
work.  Men  must  stand  on  their  own  feet  in  Canada, 
and  keep  those  feet  hustling  in  winter — or  die.  It  is 
not  a  land  for  people  who  think  the  world  owes  them  a 
living.  They  have  to  earn  the  living  and  earn  it  hard, 
and  if  they  don't  earn  it,  there  are  neither  free  soup 
kitchens  nor  maudlin  charities  to  fill  idle  stomachs 
with  some  other  man's  earnings. 

"Why  do  you  think  so  many  young  Englishmen  fail 
to  make  good  in  Canada  ?"  I  asked  a  young  Yorkshire 
mill  hand  who  had  come  to  Canada  with  his  five  broth- 
ers and  homesteaded  nearly  a  thousand  acres  on  the 
north  bank  of  the  Saskatchewan.  The  house  was  built 
of  logs  and  clay.  There  was  not  a  piece  of  store  fur- 
niture in  it  except  the  stove.  The  beds  were  berths 
extemporized  ship-fashion,  with  cowhides  and  bear- 
skins for  covering.  The  seats  were  benches.  The 
table  was  a  rough-hewn  plank.  These  young  factory 
hands  had  things  reduced  to  the  simplicity  of  a  Rob- 
inson Crusoe.    They  had  come  out  each  with  less  than 


100     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

one  hundred  dollars,  but  they  had  their  nine  hundred 
and  sixty  acres  proved  up  and  wintered  some  ten 
horses  and  thirty  head  of  cattle  in  a  sod  and  log  stable. 
They  had  acquired  what  small  ready  cash  they  could  by 
selling  oats  and  hay  to  newcomers.  The  hay  they  sold 
at  four  dollars  a  ton,  the  oats  at  thirty  cents  a  bushel. 
The  boy  I  questioned  had  all  the  characteristics  of  the 
overworked  factory  hand — abnormally  large  forehead, 
cramped  chest,  half-developed  limbs.  Yet  the  health 
of  outdoor  life  glowed  from  his  face,  and  he  looked  as 
if  his  muscles  had  become  knotted  whipcords. 

"Why  do  I  think  so  many  young  Englishmen  fail 
to  make  good  settlers?"  he  repeated,  changing  my 
question  a  little.  "Because,  up  to  a  few  years  ago,  the 
wrong  kind  of  people  came.  The  only  young  English- 
men who  came  up  to  a  few  years  ago  were  no-goods, 
who  had  failed  at  home.  They  were  the  kind  of  city 
scrubs  who  give  up  a  job  when  it  is  hard  and  then  run 
for  free  meals  at  the  soup  kitchen.  There  aren't  any 
soup  kitchens  out  here,  and  when  they  found  they  had 
to  work  before  they  could  eat,  they  cleared  out  and 
gave  the  country  the  blame.  Men  who  are  out  of  work 
half  the  time  at  home  get  into  the  habit  of  depending 
on  charity  keeping  them.  When  you  arc  a  hundred 
miles  from  a  railroad  town,  there  isn't  any  charity  to 
keep  you  out  here;  you  have  to  hustle  for  yourself. 
But  there  is  a  different  class  of  Englishmen  coming 


THE    COMING   OF   THE   Bf^JifeH  :ldl 

now.    The  men  coming  now  have  worked  and  want  to 
work." 

And  yet — at  another  point  a  hundred  miles  from 
settlement  I  came  on  a  woman  who  belonged  to  that 
very  type  that  ought  never  to  emigrate.  She  was  a 
woman  picked  out  of  the  slums  by  a  charity  organiza- 
tion. She  had  presumably  been  scrubbed  and  curried 
and  taught  household  duties  before  being  shipped  in 
a  famous  colony  to  Canada.  The  colony  went  to 
pieces  in  a  deplorable  failure  on  facing  its  first  year 
of  difficulties,  but  she  had  married  a  Canadian  fron- 
tiersman and  remained.  She  wore  all  the  slum  marks 
— bad  teeth,  loose-feeble-will  in  the  mouth,  furtive 
whining  eyes.  She  was  clean  personally  and  paraded 
her  religion  in  unctuous  phrase ;  but  I  need  only  to  tell 
a  Canadian  that  she  had  lived  in  her  shanty  three 
years  and  it  was  still  bare  of  comfort  as  a  biscuit  box, 
to  explain  why  the  Dominion  regards  this  type  as 
unsuitable  for  pioneering.  The  American  or  Canadian 
wife  of  a  frontiersman  would  have  had  skin  robes  for 
rugs,  biscuit  boxes  painted  for  bureaus,  and  chairs 
hand-hewn  out  of  rough  timber  upholstered  in  cheap 
prints.  But  the  really  amazing  thing  was  the  condi- 
tion of  her  children.  They  were  fat,  rosy,  exuberant 
in  health  and  energy.  They  were  Canadians.  In  a 
decade  they  would  begin  to  fill  their  place  as  nation 
makers.     Back  in  England  they  would  have  gone  to 


10^    TiiE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

the  human  scrap  heap  in  hunger  and  rags.  Ten  years 
of  slums  would  have  made  them  into  what  their  mother 
was — an  unfit;  but  ten  years  of  Canada  was  making 
them  into  robust  humans  capable  of  battling  with  life 
and  mastering  it. 

The  line  is  a  fine  one  and  needs  to  be  drawn  with  dis- 
tinction. Canada  does  not  begrudge  the  down-and- 
outs,  the  failures,  the  disinherited,  the  dispossessed,  a 
chance  to  begin  over  again.  She  realizes  that  she  has 
room,  boundless  room,  for  such  as  they  are  to  succeed 
— and  many  more ;  but  what  she  can  not  and  will  not 
do  is  assume  the  burden  of  these  people  when  they 
come  to  Canada  and  will  not  try  and  fail.  What  she 
can  not  and  will  not  do  is  permit  Europe  to  clean  her 
pig-sties  of  vice  and  send  the  human  offal  to  Cana- 
(dian  shores.  Children,  strays,  waifs,  reforms — who 
have  been  taken  and  tested  and  tried  and  taught  to 
support  themselves — she  welcomes  by  the  thousands. 
In  fact,  she  has  welcomed  12,260  of  them  in  ten  years, 
and  the  cases  of  lapses  back  to  failure  have  been  so 
small  a  proportion  as  to  be  inconsiderable. 

In  the  early  days,  "the  remittance  man" — or  young 
Englishman  living  round  saloons  in  idleness  on  a  small 
monthly  allowance  from  home — fell  into  bad  repute  in 
Canada;  and  it  didn't  help  his  repute  in  the  least  to 
have  a  title  appended  to  his  remittance.  Unless  he 
were  efficient,  the  title  stood  in  his  way  when  he  applied 
for  a  job,  whether  as  horse  jockey  or  bank  clerk.    Ca- 


THE    COMING    OF    THE    ENGLISH     103 

nadians  do  not  ask — "Who  are  you?"  or  "What  have 
jou?"  but  "What  can  you  do?"  "What  can  you  do  to 
add  to  tlie  nation's  yearly  output  of  things  done — of  a 
sohd  plus  on  the  right  side  of  the  yearly  balance  ?"  It  is 
a  brutal  way  of  putting  things.  It  does  not  make  for 
poetry  and  art.  It  may  be  sordid.  I  believe  as  a  peo- 
ple we  Canadians,  perhaps,  do  err  on  the  sordid  side  of 
the  practical,  but  it  also  makes  for  solidity  and  na- 
tional strength. 

Ten  years  have  witnessed  a  complete  change  in  the 
class  of  Englishmen  coming  to  Canada.  The  drifter, 
the  floater,  the  make-shift,  rarely  comes.  The  men 
now  coming  are  the  land-seekers — of  the  blood  and 
type  that  settled  England  and  New  England  and  Vir- 
ginia— of  the  blood  and  type,  in  a  word,  that  make 
nations.  Hard  on  the  heels  of  the  land-seekers  have 
come  yet  another  type — the  type  that  binds  country  to 
country  in  bonds  tighter  than  any  international  treaty 
— ^the  investors  of  surplus  capital. 


Ill 


It  is  possible  to  keep  a  record  of  American  invest- 
ments in  Canada;  because  possessions  are  registered 
more  or  less  approximately  at  ports  of  entry  and  in 
bills  of  incorporation;  but  the  English  investor  has 
acted  through  agents,  through  trust  and  loan  com- 
panies, through  banks.    He  is  the  buyer  of  Canada's 


104     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

railway  stocks,  of  her  municipal,  street  railway,  irri- 
gation and  public  works  bonds.  Of  Canadian  rail- 
road bonds  and  stocks,  there  are  $395,000,000  defi- 
nitely known  to  be  held  in  England.  Municipal  and 
civic  bonds  must  represent  many  times  that  total,  and 
the  private  investments  in  land  have  been  simply  in- 
calculable. The  Lloyd  George  system  of  taxation  was 
at  once  followed  by  enormous  investments  by  the  Eng- 
lish aristocracy  in  Canada.  These  investments  in- 
cluded large  holdings  of  city  property  in  Montreal 
and  Winnipeg  and  Vancouver,  of  ranch  lands  in  Al- 
berta, town  sites  along  the  new  railroads,  timber  limits 
in  British  Columbia  and  copper  and  coal  mines  in  both 
Alberta  and  British  Columbia.  The  Portland,  Essex, 
Sutherland  and  Beresford  families  have  been  among 
the  investors.  It  does  not  precisely  mean  the  coming 
of  an  English  aristocracy  to  Canada,  but  it  does  mean 
the  implanting  of  an  enormous  total  of  the  British 
aristocracy's  capital  in  Canada  for  long-time  invest- 
ment. 

It  would  be  untrue  to  say  that  these  investments 
have  all  been  wisely  made.  One  wonders,  indeed,  at 
what  the  purchasing  agents  were  aiming  in  some  cases. 
I  know  of  small  blocks  in  insignificant  railroad  towns 
bought  for  sixty  thousand  dollars,  for  no  other  reason, 
apparently,  than  that  they  cost  ten  thousand  dollars 
and  had  been  sold  for  twenty  thousand  dollars.  The 
block,  which  would  yield  twenty  per  cent,  on  ten  thou- 


THE    COMING    OF    THE    ENGLISH     105 

sand  dollars,  yields  only  three  per  cent,  on  sixty  thou- 
sand dollars.  Held  long  enough,  doubtless,  it  will  re- 
pay the  investor;  or  if  the  investor  is  satisfied  with 
three  per  cent.,  where  Canadians  earn  twenty  per  cent. 
— it  may  be  all  right ;  but  Canadians  expect  their  in- 
vestments to  repay  capital  cost  in  ten  years,  and  they 
do  not  buy  for  profits  to  posterity  but  for  profits  in  a 
lifetime. 

Similarly  of  many  of  the  ranches  bought  at  five  dol- 
lars an  acre  by  Americans  and  resold  as  raivnches  at 
twenty-five  dollars  to  forty  dollars  to  Englishmen.  If 
the  Englishmen  will  be  satisfied  with  two  and  three  per 
cent.,  where  the  American  demands  and  makes  twelve 
to  twenty  per  cent. — the  investment  may  make  satis- 
factory returns ;  but  it  is  hard  to  conceive  of  enormous 
tracts  two  and  three  hundred  miles  from  a  railroad 
bought  for  fruit  lands  at  twenty-five  dollars  an  acre. 
Fruit  without  a  market  is  worse  than  waste.  It  is  loss. 
When  questioned,  these  English  investors  explain  how 
raw  fruit  lands  that  sold  at  twenty-five  dollars  an  acre 
a  few  years  ago  in  the  United  States  to-day  sell  for 
five  hundred  dollars  and  one  thousand  dollars  an  acre. 
The  point  they  miss  is — that  these  top  values  are  the 
result  of  exceptional  conditions ;  of  millionaires  turn- 
ing a  region  into  a  playground  as  in  the  walnut  and 
citrus  groves  of  California;  or  of  nearness  to  market 
and  water  transportation;  or  of  peculiarly  finely  or- 
ganized marketing  unions.     If  the  rich  estates   of 


106     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

England  like  to  take  these  risks,  it  is  their  affair;  but 
they  must  not  blame  Canada  if  their  investment  does 
not  give  them  the  same  returns  as  more  careful  buying 
gives  the  Canadian  and  American. 

Not  all  investments  are  of  this  extravagant  char- 
acter. Hundreds  of  thousands  of  acres  and  city  prop- 
erties untold  have  been  bought  by  English  Investors 
who  will  multiply  their  capital  a  hundredfold  In  ten 
years.  I  know  properties  bought  along  the  lines  of 
the  new  railroads  for  a  few  hundred  dollars  that  have 
resold  at  twenty  thousand  and  thirty  thousand  and 
fifty  thousand.  It  is  such  profits  as  these  that  lure  to 
wrong  investment. 

Horse  and  cattle  ranching  has  appealed  to  the 
Englishman  from  the  first,  and  as  great  fortunes  have 
been  realized  from  it  in  Canada  as  In  Argentina. 
However,  the  day  of  unf  enced  pasture  ground  Is  past ; 
and  In  reselling  ranches  for  farms,  many  English  In- 
vestors have  multiplied  their  fortunes.  In  the  out- 
door life  and  freedom  from  conventional  cares — there 
has  been  a  peculiar  charm  In  ranch  life.  In  no  life 
are  the  grit  and  efficiency  of  the  well-bred  In  such 
marked  contrast  with  the  puling  whine  and  shiftless- 
ness  of  the  settler  from  the  cesspool  of  the  city  slums. 
I  have  gone  into  a  prairie  shanty  where  an  English- 
woman sat  In  filth  and  rags  and  Idleness,  cursing  the 
country  to  which  she  had  come  and  bewailing  In  cock- 
ney  English  that  she  had  come  to  this;  and  I  have 


THE    COMING   OF   THE    ENGLISH     107 

gone  on  to  an  English  ranch  where  there  presided 
some  young  Englishman's  sister,  who  had  literally 
never  done  a  stroke  in  her  life  till  she  came  to  Canada, 
when  in  emergency  of  prairie  fire,  or  blizzard,  or  ab- 
sent ranch  hands,  she  has  saddled  her  horse  and 
rounded  to  shelter  herds  of  cattle  and  droves  of  ponies. 
She  didn't  boast  about  it.  She  probably  didn't  men- 
tion it,  and  when  winter  came,  she  would  go  off  for 
her  holiday  to  England  or  California.  Having  come 
of  blood  that  had  proved  itself  fit  in  England,  she 
proved  the  same  strain  of  blood  in  Canada ;  and  to  this 
class  of  English  Canada  gives  more  than  a  welcome. 
She  confers  charter  rights. 

Lack  of  domestic  help  will  long  be  the  great  draw- 
back for  English  people  on  the  prairie.  You  may 
bring  your  help  with  you  if  you  hke.  If  they  are 
single,  they  will  marry.  If  they  are  married,  they  will 
take  up  land  of  their  own  and  begin  farming  for  them- 
selves. It  is  this  which  forces  efficiency  or  exter- 
minates— on  the  prairie.  Let  no  woman  come  to  the 
prairie  with  dolce  far  niente  dreams  of  opalescent 
peaks,  of  fenceless  fields  and  rides  to  a  horizon  that 
forever  recedes,  with  a  wind  that  sings  a  jubilate  of 
freedom.  All  these  she  will  have;  but  they  are  not 
ends  in  themselves;  they  are  incidental.  Days  there 
will  be  when  the  fat  squaw  who  is  doing  the  washing 
will  put  all  the  laundry  in  soap  suds,  then  roll  down 
her  sleeves  and  demand  double  pay  before  she  goes  on. 


108     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

Prairie  fires  will  come  when  men  are  absent,  and  women 
must  know  how  to  set  a  back  fire;  and  whether  the 
ranch  hands  are  near  or  far,  stock  must  never  be 
allowed  to  drive  before  a  blizzard.  The  woman  with 
iron  in  her  blood  will  meet  all  fate's  challenges  half- 
way and  master  every  emergency.  The  kind  that  has 
a  rabbit  heart  and  sits  down  to  weep  and  wail  should 
not  essay  adventures  in  the  Canadian  West. 


IV 


I  said  that  England's  colonies  depended  on  the 
Mother  Country  for  protection  from  attack  by  land 
and  sea.  Of  the  vessels  calling  at  Canadian  ports, 
three-fifths  are  British,  one-fifth  foreign,  and  one- 
fifth  Canadian.  Where  England  is  the  great  sea  car- 
rier for  Europe,  Canada  has  not  wakened  up  to  estab- 
lish enough  sea  carriers  for  her  own  needs. 

Canada's  exports  to  the  whole  British  Empire  are 
almost  two  hundred  millions  a  3'ear.*  Her  aggregate 
trade  with  the  British  Empire  has  increased  three  hun- 
dred per  cent,  since  confederation,  or  from  one  hun- 


*  The  figures  are  from  the  official  Trade  and  Commerce 
Report,  Part  I,  1914 :   They  tabulate  the  trade  of  1913  thus : 

Imports  from  United  Kingdom,  $138,741,736;  imports  from 
United  States,  $435,770,081.  Average  duty  imports  United 
Kingdom,  25.1.  Average  duty  imports  United  States,  24.1. 
Per  cent,  of  goods  from  U.  K.,  20.1 ;  per  cent,  of  goods  from 
U.  S.,  65.1. 

Exports  to  United  Kingdom,  $177,982,002 ;  exports  to  United 
States,  $150,961,675.  Percentage  goods  exported  U.  K.,  47.1; 
percentage  goods  exported  U.  S.,  40.1. 


THE    COMING    OF    THE    ENGLISH     109 

dred  and  seven  to  three  hundred  and  sixteen  millions. 
With  the  United  States,  her  aggregate  trade  has  in- 
creased from  eighty-nine  to  six  hundred  and  eight 
millions.  For  one  dollar's  worth  she  buys  in  England, 
she  buys  four  dollars'  worth  in  the  United  States. 
Here  trade  is  not  following  the  flag,  and  the  flag  is 
not  following  trade.  Trade  is  following  its  own  chan- 
nels independent  of  the  flag. 


What  is  the  future  portent  of  the  great  migration 
of  Englishmen  of  the  best  blood  and  traditions  to 
Canada.'*  There  can  be  only  one  portent — a  Greater 
Britain  Overseas,  and  Canada  herself  has  not  in  the 
slightest  degree  wakened  to  what  this  implies.  She 
knows  that  her  railroads  are  a  safe  and  shorter  path 
to  the  Orient  than  by  Suez ;  and  in  a  cursory  way 
she  may  also  know  that  the  nations  of  the  world  are 
maneuvering  for  place  and  power  on  the  Pacific;  but 
that  she  may  be  draAvn  into  the  contest  and  have  to 
fight  for  her  life  in  it — she  hardly  grasps.  If  you 
told  Canada  that  within  the  life  of  men  and  women 
now  living  her  Pacific  Coast  may  bristle  with  as  many 
forts  and  ports  as  the  North  Sea — you  would  be 
greeted  with  an  amused  smile.  Yet  all  this  may  be 
part  of  the  destiny  of  a  Greater  Britain  Overseas. 

With  men  such  as  Sir  John  Macdonald  and  Laurier 


110    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

and  Borden  on  the  roster  roll  of  Canada's  great,  one 
dislikes  to  charge  that  Canadian  statesmen  have  not 
grown  big  enough  for  their  job.  The  Aztec  Indians 
used  to  cement  their  tribal  houses  with  human  blood. 
Canada's  part  in  the  Great  War  may  be  the  blood-sign 
above  the  lintel  of  her  new  nationality. 


CHAPTER  VII 


THE   COMING   OF   THE   FOEEIGNEE 


So  FAR  scarcely  a  cloud  appears  on  the  horizon  of 
Canada's  national  destiny.  Like  a  ship  launched 
roughly  from  her  stays  to  tempests  in  shallow  water, 
she  seems  to  have  left  tempests  and  shallow  water  be- 
hind and  to  have  sailed  proudly  out  to  the  great  deeps. 
In  '37  she  settled  whether  she  would  be  ruled  by  spe- 
cial interests,  by  a  plutocracy,  by  an  oligarchy.  In 
'67  she  settled  forever  what  in  the  United  States  would 
be  called  "states'  rights."  That  is — she  gathered  the 
scattered  members  of  her  fold  into  one  confederation 
and  bound  them  together  not  only  with  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  British  North  America  Act,  but  with 
bands  of  iron  and  steel  in  railways  that  linked  Nova 
Scotia  with  British  Columbia.  By  '77  she  had' met 
the  menace  of  the  American  high  tariff,  which  barred 
her  from  markets,  and  entered  on  a  fiscal  system  of 
her  own.  By  '87  her  system  of  transportation  east 
and  west  was  in  working  order  and  she  had  begun  the 
subsidizing  of  steamships  and  the  search  for  world 

111 


112     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

markets  which  have  since  resulted  in  a  total  foreign 
trade  equal  to  one-fourth  that  of  the  United  States. 
By  '97  she  was  almost  ready  for  the  preferential 
tariff  reduction  of  from  twenty-five  to  thirty-three 
per  cent,  on  British  goods  which  the  Laurier  govern- 
ment later  introduced,  and  she  had  established  her 
right  to  negotiate  commercial  treaties  with  foreign 
powers  independent  of  the  Mother  Country.  By  1907 
she  was  in  the  very  maelstrom  of  the  maddest  real 
estate  boom  and  immigration  flood  tide  that  a  sane 
country  could  weather. 

In  a  word,  Canada's  greatest  dangers  and  difficul- 
ties seem  to  have  been  passed.  The  sea  seems  calm  and 
the  sky  fair.  In  reality,  she  is  close  to  the  greatest 
dangers  that  can  threaten  a  nation — dangers  within, 
not  without ;  dangers,  not  physical,  but  psychological, 
which  are  harder  to  overcome ;  dangers  of  dilution  and 
contamination  of  national  blood,  national  grit,  na- 
tional government,  national  ideals. 

These  are  strong  statements !  Let  us  see  if  facts 
substantiate  them ! 

Canada's  natural  increase  of  population  is  only 
one-fourth  her  incoming  tide  of  colonists.  In  a  word, 
put  her  natural  increase  at  eighty  to  one  hundred 
thousand  a  year,  and  it  is  nearer  eighty  than  one 
hundred  thousand.  Her  immigration  exceeds  four 
hundred  thousand.  If  that  immigration  were  all 
British  and  all  American  there  would  be  no  problem ; 


THE    COMING   OF   THE    FOREIGNER     113 

for  though  there  are  differences  in  government,  both 
people  have  the  same  national  ideal — utter  freedom 
of  opportunity  for  each  man  to  work  out  the  best  in 
him.  It  is  an  even  wager  that  the  average  Canadian 
coming  to  the  United  States  is  unaware  of  any  dif- 
ference in  his  freedom,  and  the  average  American 
coming  to  Canada  is  unaware  of  any  difference  in  his 
freedom.  Both  people  have  fought  and  bled  for  free- 
dom and  treasure  it  as  the  most  sacred  thing  in  life. 

But  this  is  not  so  of  thirty-three  per  cent,  of  Can- 
ada's immigrants  who  do  not  speak  English,  much  less 
understand  the  institutions  of  freedom  to  which  they 
have  come.  If  they  had  been  worthy  of  freedom,  or 
capable  of  making  right  use  of  it,  they  would  have 
fought  for  it  in  the  land  from  which  they  came,  or 
died  fighting  for  it — as  Scotchmen  and  Irishmen  and 
Englishmen  and  Americans  have  fought  and  bled  for 
freedom  wherever  they  have  lived.  A  people  unused 
to  freedom  suddenly  plunged  in  freedom  need  not  sur- 
prise us  if  they  run  amuck. 


n 


"This  is  mos'  won'erful  country,"  writes  Tony  to 
his  brother  in  Italy.  "They  let  us  vote  and  they  pay 
us  two  dollars  to  do  it." 

"Yah,  yah,"  answered  a  foreign  mother  in  North 
Winnipeg  to  a  school-teacher,  trying  to  recall  why 


114.     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

her  young  hopeful  had  played  truant.  "Dat  vas 
eelection — my  boy,  he  not  go — because  Jacob — my 
man — he  vote  seven  time  and  make  seven  dollar." 
(The  whole  family  had  been  on  a  glorious  seven-dollar 
drunk. ) 

"Does  this  man  understand  for  what  he  is  voting?" 
demanded  the  election  clerk  of  a  Galician  interpreter 
who  had  brought  in  a  naturalized  foreigner  to  vote. 

"Oh,  yaas ;  I  eexplain  heem." 

"Can  he  write.?" 

An  indeterminate  nod  of  the  head;  so  the  voter 
marks  his  ballot,  and  his  vote  counts  for  as  much  as 
that  of  the  premier  or  president  of  a  railroad. 

For  years  Canadians  have  pointed  the  finger  of 
scorn  at  the  notorious  misgovernment  of  American 
cities,  at  the  manner  in  which  foreigners  were  herded 
to  the  polls  by  party  bosses  to  vote  as  they  were  paid. 
The  cases  of  a  Louisiana  judge  impeached  for  issu- 
ing bogus  certificates  of  citizenship  to  four  hundred 
aliens  and  of  New  York  courts  that  have  naturalized 
ignorant  foreigners  in  batches  of  twenty-fiVe  thou- 
sand in  a  few  months  have  all  pointed  a  moral  or 
adorned  a  tale  in  Canada. 

Yet  what  is  happening  in  Canada  since  the  coming 
of  hordes  of  ignorant  immigrants?  I  quote  what  I 
have  stated  elsewhere,  an  episode  typical  of  similar 
episodes,  wherever  the  foreign  vote  herds  in  colonies. 
An  election  was   coming  on  in  one  of  the  western 


THE    COMING   OF   THE   FOREIGNER     116 

provinces,  where  reside  twenty  thousand  foreigners 
almost  en  bloc.  The  contest  was  going  to  be  very 
close.  Offices  were  opened  in  a  certain  block.  Le- 
gally it  requires  three  years  to  transform  a  foreigner 
into  a  voting  Canadian  subject.  He  must  have  re- 
sided in  Canada  three  years  before  he  can  take  out 
his  papers.  The  process  is  simple  to  a  fault.  The 
newcomer  goes  before  a  county  judge  with  proof  of 
residence  and  two  Canadian  witnesses.  He  must  not 
be  a  criminal,  and  he  must  be  of  age.  That  is  all  that 
is  required  to  change  a  Pole  or  a  Sicilian  or  a  Slav  into 
a  free  and  independent  Canadian  fully  competent  to 
apprehend  that  voting  implies  duties  and  fitness  as 
well  as  rights.  The  contest  was  going  to  be  very 
close.  A  few  of  the  party  leaders  could  not  bear  to 
have  those  newcomers  wait  a  long  three  years  for 
naturalization.  They  got  together  and  they  forged 
in  the  same  hand,  the  same  manipulation,  the  signa- 
tures of  three  hundred  foreigners,  who  did  not  know 
in  the  least  what  they  were  doing,  to  applications 
for  naturalization  papers — foreigners  who  had  not 
been  three  months  in  Canada.  If  forgery  did  not 
matter,  why  should  perjury?  The  perpetrators  of 
this  fraud  happened  to  be  provincial  and  of  a  stripe 
different  politically  from  the  federal  government  then 
in  power  at  Ottawa.  The  other  party  had  not  been 
asleep  while  this  little  game  was  going  on.  The  party 
heeler  neither  slumbers  nor  sleeps.     The  papers  with 


116     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

those  three  hundred  forged  signatures — ^names  in  the 
writing  of  foreigners,  who  could  neither  read,  write, 
nor  speak  a  word  of  English — ^were  sent  down  to  the 
Department  of  Justice  in  Ottawa;  and  everybody 
waited  for  the  explosion.  The  explosion  did  not  come. 
Those  perjuries  and  forgeries  slumber  yet,  secure  in 
the  Department  of  Justice.  For  when  the  provincial 
politicians  heard  what  had  been  done  to  trap  them, 
they  sent  down  a  little  message  to  the  heelers  of  the 
party  in  power:  If  you  go  after  us  for  this,  we'll  go 
after  you  for  that;  and  perhaps  the  pot  had  better 
not  call  the  kettle  black.  The  chiefs  of  each  party 
were  powerless  to  act  because  the  heelers  of  both  par- 
ties had  been  alike  guilty. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  fault  here  was  not  in  the 
poor  ignorant  foreigner  but  in  the  corrupt  Canadian 
politicians.  That  is  true  of  Canada,  as  it  is  of  similar 
practices  in  the  United  States  ;  but  the  presence  of  the 
ignorant,  irresponsible  foreigner  in  hordes  made  the 
corruption  possible,  where  it  is  neither  possible  nor 
safe  with  men  of  Saxon  blood,  with  German,  Scandi- 
navian or  Danish  immigrants,  for  instance. 


HI 


It  is  futile  to  talk  of  the  poor  and  ignorant  for- 
eigner as  a  Goth  or  a  Vandal — ^to  talk  of  excluding 
the  ignorant  and  the  lowly.    The  floating  "he-camps" 


THE    COMING    OF   THE    FOREIGNER     117 

— as  these  floating  immigrants  are  called  in  labor  cir- 
cles— are  to-day  doing  much  of  the  manual  work  of 
the  world.  Canadian  railways  could  not  be  built  with- 
out them.  Canadian  industrial  and  farm  life  could 
not  go  on  without  them.  They  are  needed  from  Hali- 
fax to  Vancouver,  and  their  labor  Is  one  of  the  wealth 
producers  for  the  nation. 

And  do  not  think  for  a  moment  that  the  wealth  they 
produce  is  for  capital — for  the  lords  of  finance  and 
not  for  themselves.  When  Montenegrins,  who  earn 
thirty  cents  a  day  in  their  own  land,  earn  eleven  dol- 
lars a  day  on  dynamite  work  constructing  Canadian 
railroads,  it  is  not  surprising  that  they  retire  rich, 
and  that  the  railroad  for  which  they  worked  would 
have  gone  bankrupt  if  the  Dominion  had  not  come  to 
its  aid  with  a  loan  of  millions.  Likewise  of  Poles  and 
Galicians  in  the  coal  mines.  When  Charles  Gordon 
— Ralph  Connor — was  sent  to  investigate  the  strike 
in  these  mines  he  found  foreigners  earning  seventeen 
dollars  a  day  on  piecework  who  had  never  earned  fifty 
cents  a  day  in  their  own  land.  I  have  in  mind  one 
Galician  settler  who  has  accumulated  a  fortune  of 
$150,000  in  perfectly  legitimate  ways  in  ten  years. 
Even  the  Doukhobors — the  eccentric  Russian  religious 
sect — ^hooted  for  their  oddities  of  manner  and  frenzies 
of  religion — are  accumulating  wealth  in  the  Elbow 
of  the  Saskatchewan,  where  they  are  settled. 

From  the  national  point  of  view  Canada  needs  these 


118     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

foreign  settlers.  She  needs  their  labor.  Every  man  to  her 
is  worth  fifteen  hundred  dollars  in  productive  work.  The 
higher  wages  he  earns  on  piecework  the  more  Canada 
is  pleased;  for  the  more  work  he  has  done.  But  at 
the  present  rate  of  peopling  Canada  these  foreign 
born  will  in  twenty  years  outnumber  the  native  born. 
What  will  become  of  Canada's  national  ideals  then? 
In  one  foreign  section  of  the  Northwest  I  once  trav- 
eled a  hundred  miles  through  new  settlements  without 
hearing  one  word  of  English  spoken ;  and  these  Douk- 
hobors  and  Galicians  and  Roumanians  and  Slavs  were 
making  good.  They  were  prospering  exceedingly. 
Men  who  had  come  with  less  than  one  hundred  dollars 
each  and  lived  for  the  first  years  in  crowded  tenements 
of  Winnipeg  or  under  thatch-roof  huts  on  the  prairie 
now  had  good  frame  houses,  stables,  stock,  modern 
implements.  The  story  is  told  of  one  poor  Russian 
who,  when  informed  of  the  fact  that  the  land  would 
be  his  very  own,  fell  to  the  earth  and  kissed  the  soil 
and  wept.  Such  settlers  make  good  on  soil,  whatever 
ill  they  work  in  a  polling  booth.  Except  for  his  re- 
ligious vagaries,  the  Doukhobor  Russian  is  law  abid- 
ing. The  same  can  not  be  said  of  the  other  Slav  im- 
migrants. Crime  in  the  Northwest,  according  to  the 
report  of  the  Mounted  Police,  has  increased  appal- 
lingly. The  crimes  are  against  life  rather  than 
against  property — the  crimes  of  a  people  formerly 
kept  in  order  by  the  constant  presence  of  a  soldier's 


THE   COMING   OF   THE   FOREIGNER     119 

bayonet  run  amuck  in  Canada  with  too  much  freedom. 
And  the  votes  of  these  people  will  in  twenty  years  out- 
vote the  Canadian.  These  poverty-stricken  Jews  and 
Polacks  and  Galicians  will  be  the  wealth  and  power 
of  Canada  to-morrow.  If  you  doubt  what  will  hap- 
pen, stroll  down  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York,  and  note 
the  nationality  of  the  names.  A  Chicago  professor 
carefully  noted  the  nationality  of  all  the  names  sub- 
mitted in  Chicago's  elections  for  a  term  of  years. 
Tliree-quarters  of  the  names  were  of  nationalities 
only  one  generation  away  from  the  Ghetto. 

Man  to  man  on  the  prairie  farm,  in  the  lumber 
woods,  your  Canadian  can  out-do  the  Russian  or 
Galician  or  Hebrew.  The  Canadian  uses  more  brains 
and  his  aggregate  returns  are  bigger;  but  boned 
down  to  a  basis  of  who  can  save  the  most  and  become 
rich  fastest,  your  foreigner  has  the  native-born  Ca- 
nadian beaten  at  the  start.  Where  the  Canadian 
earns  ten  dollars  and  spends  eighty  per  cent,  of  it, 
your  foreigner  earns  five  dollars,  and  saves  almost  all 
of  it.  How  does  he  do  this .''  He  spends  next  to  noth- 
ing. Let  me  be  perfectly  specific  on  how  he  does  it: 
I  have  known  Russian,  Hebrew,  Italian  families  in  the 
Northwest  who  sewed  their  children  into  their  clothes 
for  the  winter  and  never  permitted  a  change  till 
spring.  Your  Canadian  would  buy  half  a  dozen  suits 
for  his  children  in  the  interval.  Your  foreigner  buys 
of  furniture  and  furnishings  and  comforts  practically 


120     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

nothing  for  the  first  few  years.  He  sleeps  on  the 
floor,  with  straw  for  a  bed,  and  he  occupies  houses 
twenty-four  to  a  room — which  is  the  actual  report  in 
foreign  quarters  in  the  north  end  of  Winnipeg.  Your 
Canadian  requires  a  house  of  six  rooms  for  a  family 
of  six.  When  your  foreigner  has  accumulated  a  little 
capital  he  buys  land  or  a  city  tenement.  Your  Cana- 
dian educates  his  children,  clothes  them  a  little  better, 
moves  into  a  better  house.  When  the  foreigner  buys 
a  block,  he  moves  his  whole  family  into  one  room  in 
the  basement  and  does  the  janitor  and  scrubbing  and 
heating  work  himself  or  forces  his  women  to  do  it  for 
him.  When  the  Canadian  buys  a  block,  he  hires  a 
janitor,  an  engineer,  a  scrub  woman,  and  if  he  moves 
into  the  block,  he  takes  one  of  the  best  apartments. 
It  does  not  take  any  guessing  to  know  which  of  these 
two  will  buy  a  second  block  first — especially  if  the 
foreigner  lives  on  peanuts  and  beer,  and  the  Canadian 
on  beefsteak  and  fresh  fruit.  Nor  does  it  take  any 
guessing  to  know  which  type  stands  for  the  higher 
citizenship — ^which  will  make  toward  the  better  na- 
tion. 

IV 

The  question  is — will  Canada  remain  Canada  when 
these  new  races  come  up  to  power  ?  And  Canada  need 
not  hoot  that  question ;  or  gather  her  skirts  self- 
righteously  and  exclusively  about  her  and  pass  by  on 


THE    COMING   OF   THE   FOREIGNER     121 

the  other  side.  The  United  States  did  that,  and  to-day 
certain  sections  of  the  foreign  vote  are  powerful 
enough  to  dictate  to  the  President. 

Take  a  httle  closer  look  at  facts ! 

Foreigners  have  never  been  rushed  into  Canada  as 
cheap  labor  to  displace  the  native  born,  so  they  have 
not,  as  in  great  American  industrial  centers,  lowered 
the  standard  of  living  for  Canadians.  They  have 
come  attracted  by  two  magnets  that  give  them  great 
power:  (1)  wages  so  high  they  can  save;  (2)  land 
absolutely  free  but  for  the  ten-dollar  preemption  fee. 

In  1881  there  were  six  hundred  and  sixty-seven 
Jews  in  Canada. 

In  1901  there  were  sixteen  thousand.  To-day  it  is 
estimated  there  are  twenty  thousand  each  in  Montreal, 
Toronto,  Winnipeg.  These  Jews  have  not  gone  out 
to  the  land.  They  have  crowded  into  the  industrial 
centers  reproducing  the  housing  evils  from  which  they 
fled  the  European  Ghetto.  There  are  sections  of  Win- 
nipeg and  Montreal  and  Toronto  where  the  very 
streets  reek  of  Bowery  smells.  When  they  go  to  the 
woods  or  the  land,  these  people  have  not  the  stamina 
to  stand  up  to  hard  work.  Yet  in  the  cities,  by  hook 
or  crook,  by  push-cart  aijd  trade,  they  acquire  wealth. 
On  the  charity  organization  of  the  cities  they  impose 
terrible  burdens  during  Canada's  long  cold  winter. 

In  one  section  of  the  western  prairie  are  150,000 
Ga.licians.    Of  Austrians  and  Germans — the  Germans 


U2    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

chiefly  from  Austria  and  Russia — there  are  300,000 
in  Canada,  or  a  population  equal  to  the  city  of  Mon- 
treal. Of  Italians  at  last  report  there  were  fully 
60,000  in  Canada.  In  one  era  of  seven  years  there 
took  up  permanent  abode  in  Canada  121,000  Aus- 
trians,  50,000  Jews,  60,000  Italians,  60,000  Poles  and 
Russians,  40,000  Scandinavians.  When  you  consider 
that  by  actual  count  in  the  United  States  in  1900, 
1,000  foreign-born  immigrants  had  612  children,  com- 
pared to  1,000  Americans  having  296  children,  it  is 
simply  inconceivable  but  that  this  vast  influx  of  alien 
life  should  not  work  tremendous  and  portentous 
changes  in  Canada's  life,  as  a  similar  influx  has  com- 
pletely changed  the  face  of  some  American  institutions 
in  twenty  years.  Immigration  to  Canada  has  jumped 
from  54,000  in  1851-1861  to  142,000  in  1881-1891, 
and  to  2,000,000  in  1901-1911.  It  has  not  come  in 
feeble  rivulets  that  lost  their  identity  in  the  main  cur- 
rent— as  in  the  United  States  up  to  1840.  It  has 
come  to  Canada  in  inundating  floods. 

Chief  mention  has  been  made  of  the  races  from  the 
south  of  Europe  because  the  races  from  the  north  of 
Europe  assimilate  so  quickly  that  their  identity  is  lost. 
Of  Scandinavians  there  are  In  Canada  some  fifty  thou- 
sand; of  Icelanders,  easily  twenty  thousand;  and  so 
quickly  do  they  merge  with  Canadian  life  that  you 
forget  they  are  foreigners.  I  was  a  child  in  Winni- 
peg when  the  first  Icelanders  arrived,  and  their  rise  has 


THE   COMING   OF   THE   FOREIGNER     123 

been  a  national  epic.  I  do  not  believe  the  first  few 
hundreds  had  fifty  dollars  among  them.  They  slept 
under  high  board  sidewalks  for  the  first  nights  and 
erected  tar-paper  shanties  on  vacant  lots  the  next  day. 
In  these  they  housed  the  first  winter.  Though  we 
Winnipeggers  did  not  realize  it,  it  must  have  been  a 
dreadful  winter  to  them.  Their  clothing  was  of  the 
scantest.  Many  were  without  underwear.  They  lived 
ten  and  twenty  to  a  house.  The  men  sawed  wood  at  a 
dollar  and  a  half  a  day.  The  women  worked  out  at 
one  dollar  a  day.  In  a  few  weeks  each  family  had 
bought  a  cow  and  rudiments  of  winter  clothes.  By 
spring  they  had  money  to  go  out  on  their  homesteads. 
During  winter  some  of  the  grown  men  attended  school 
to  learn  English.  Teachers  declared  they  never  wit- 
nessed such  swift  mastery  of  learning.  To-day  the 
Icelanders  are  the  most  prosperous  settlers  in  Mani- 
toba. The  same  story  could  be  told  of  German  Men- 
nonites  driven  from  Russia  by  religious  persecution 
and  of  Scandinavians  driven  abroad  by  poverty.  Of 
course,  the  weak  went  to  the  wall  and  died,  and  didn't 
whine  about  the  dying,  though  some  mother's  heart 
must  have  broken  in  silence.  I  recall  one  splendid 
young  fellow  who  walked  through  every  grade  the 
public  schools  afforded,  and  then  through  the  high 
school,  and  was  on  the  point  of  graduating  in  medi- 
cine when  he  died  from  sheer  mental  and  physical 
exhaustion.     This  type  of  settler  will  build  up  Can- 


IM     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

ada's  national  ideals.    It  is  the  other  type  that  gives 
one  pause. 


Well — ^what  is  Canada  going  to  do  about  it?  Bar 
them  out !  Never !  She  needs  these  raw  brawny  Van- 
dals and  Goths  of  alien  lands  as  much  as  they  need 
Canada.  She  needs  their  hardy  virility.  They  are  the 
crude  material  of  which  she  must  manufacture  a  man- 
hood that  is  not  sissified,  and  one  must  never  forget 
that  some  of  the  most  honored  names  in  the  United 
States  are  from  these  very  races.  One  of  the  greatest 
mathematicians  in  the  United  States,  the  greatest  cop- 
per miners,  the  richest  store  keepers,  one  of  the  most 
powerful  manufacturers — these  sprang  from  the  very 
races  that  give  Canada  pause  to-day. 

It  is  on  the  school  rather  than  on  the  church  that 
Canada  must  depend  for  the  nationalizing  of  these 
alien  races.  Nearly  all  the  colonists  from  the  south  of 
Europe  have  brought  their  church  with  them.  In  one 
foreign  church  of  North  Winnipeg  is  a  congregation 
of  four  thousand,  and  certainly,  in  the  case  of  the 
Doukhobors,  the  influence  of  the  foreign  priest  has  not 
been  for  the  good  of  Canada.  But  none  of  these  races 
has  brought  with  them  a  school  system,  and  that 
throws  on  the  public  school  system  of  Canada  the  bur- 


THE   COMING   OF   THE   FOREIGNER     125 

den  of  preserving  national  ideals  for  the  future.  Will 
the  schools  prove  equal  to  it?  I  wish  I  could  answer 
unequivocally  "yes";  for  I  recall  some  beautiful  epi- 
sodes of  boys  and  girls — too  immature  to  realize  the 
importance  of  their  work — "baching"  it  in  prairie 
shanties,  teaching  at  forty  dollars  a  month;  amid  the 
isolation  of  Doukhobor  and  Galician  and  Ruthenian 
settlement  preserving  Canada's  national  ideals  for  the 
future;  little  classes  of  foreigners  in  the  schools  of 
North  Winnipeg  reading  lessons  in  perfect  English 
with  flower  gardens  below  the  window  kept  by  them- 
selves— the  little  girls  learning  sewing  and  house- 
keeping in  upper  rooms,  the  boys  learning  technical 
trades  in  the  basement.  All  this  is  good  and  well ;  but 
how  about  the  recognition  Canada  gives  these  teachers 
who  manufacture  men  and  women  out  of  mud,  who  do 
more  in  a  day  for  the  ideals  of  the  nation  than  all  the 
eloquence  that  has  been  spouted  in  Houses  of  Parlia- 
ment.? In  Germany,  they  say — once  an  army  man 
always  an  army  man;  for  though  the  pay  is  ridicu- 
lously small,  social  prestige  and  recognition  are  so 
great  that  the  army  is  the  most  desirable  vocation. 
Canada's  teachers  in  the  schools  among  foreigners  are 
doing  for  the  Dominion  what  the  German  army  has 
aimed  to  do  for  the  empire.  Do  the  Canadian  teach- 
ers receive  the  same  recognition?  The  question  needs 
no  answer.    They  receive  so  little  recognition  that  the 


126    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

majority  throw  aside  the  work  at  their  twenty-first 
year  and  crowd  into  other  over-crowded  professions. 
Meanwhile  time  moves  on,  and  in  twenty  years  the 
foreign  vote  will  outnumber  that  of  the  native  bom. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  COMING  OF  THE  OEIENTAIi 
I 

If  the  coming  of  the  foreigner  has  been  Canada's 
greatest  danger  from  within,  the  coming  of  the  Ori- 
ental has  been  one  of  her  most  perplexing  problems 
from  without.  It  is  not  only  a  perplexity  to  herself. 
It  is  a  perplexity  in  which  Canada  involves  the  empire. 

Take  the  three  great  Oriental  peoples !  With  China, 
Great  Britain  is  in  friendly  agreement.  With  Japan, 
Great  Britain  is  in  closest  international  pact.  To 
India,  Great  Britain  is  a  Mother.  Yet  Canada  re- 
fuses free  admission  to  peoples  from  all  three  coun- 
tries. Why.''  For  the  same  reason  as  do  South 
Africa  and  Australia.  It  is  only  secondarily  a  ques- 
tion of  labor.    The  thing  goes  deeper  than  that. 

Consider  Japan  first :  Panama  is  turning  every  port 
facing  west  into  a  front  door  instead  of  a  back  door. 
Within  twenty  years,  the  combined  populations  of 
American  ports  on  the  Pacific  have  j  umped  from  a  few 
hundreds  of  thousands  at  San  Francisco  and  nothing 
elsewhere  to  almost  two  million,  with  growth  continu- 

127 


128     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

ing  at  an  accelerated  rate  promising  within  another 
quarter  of  a  century  as  many  great  harbors  of  almost 
as  great  population  on  the  Pacific  as  on  the  Atlantic. 
The  Orient  has  suddenly  awakened.  It  is  importing 
something  besides  missionaries.  It  is  buying  Ameri- 
can and  Canadian  steel,  American  and  Canadian  wool, 
American  and  Canadian  wheat,  American  and  Cana- 
dian machinery,  American  and  Canadian  dressed  lum- 
ber. Ship  owners  on  the  Pacific  report  that  the  docks 
of  through  traffic  are  literally  j  ammed  with  goods  out- 
ward bound — "more  goods  than  we  have  ships,"  as 
the  president  of  one  line  testified. 

When  the  reason  for  building  Panama  has  been 
shorn  of  highfalutin  metaphors,  it  concentrates 
down  to  the  simple  bald  fact  that  the  United  States 
possessions  on  the  Pacific  had  grown  too  valuable  to  be 
guarded  by  a  navy  ten  thousand  miles  away  around 
the  Horn.  True,  Roosevelt  sent  the  fleet  around  the 
world  to  show  what  it  could  do,  and  the  country 
howled  its  jubilation  over  the  fact.  But  the  Little 
Brown  Brother  only  smiled;  for  the  fleet  hadn't  coal 
to  steam  five  hundred  miles  without  hiring  foreign 
colliers  to  follow  around  with  supply  of  fuel.  "Fine 
fleet !  To  be  sure  we  have  the  ships,"  exploded  a  rear 
admiral  in  San  Diego  Bay  a  few  years  ago ;  "but  look 
here!"  He  pointed  through  the  port  at  an  insignifi- 
cant coaling  dock  such  as  third-rate  barges  use.  "See 
any  coal.''"  he  asked.     "If  trouble  should  come" — it 


THE    COMING    OF    THE    ORIENTAL     129 

was  just  after  the  flight  of  Diaz — "we  haven't  coal 
enough  to  go  half-way  up  or  down  the  coast." 


II 


Sometimes  we  can  guess  the  game  from  the  moves 
of  the  chess  players.  With  facts  for  chessmen,  what 
are  the  moves? 

It  was  up  in  Atlin,  British  Columbia,  a  few  years 
after  the  Klondike  rush.  Five  hundred  Japs  had 
come  tumbling  into  the  mining  camp,  seemingly  from 
nowhere,  in  reality  from  Japanese  colonies  in  Hawaii. 
The  white  miners  warned  the  Japs  that  "it  wouldn't  be 
a  healthy  camp,"  but  mine  owners  were  desperate  for 
workers.  Wages  ran  at  from  five  to  ten  dollars  a  day. 
The  Japs  were  located  in  a  camp  by  themselves  and  put 
to  work.  On  dynamite  work,  for  which  the  white  man 
was  paid  five  to  ten  dollars,  the  Jap  was  paid  three  and 
five  dollars.  Still  he  held  on  with  his  teeth,  "dogged  as 
does  it,"  as  he  always  does.  Suddenly  the  provincial 
board  of  health  was  notified.  There  was  a  lot  of  sickness 
in  the  Jap  camp — "filthy  conditions,"  the  mine  owners 
reported.  The  board  of  health  found  traces  of  arsen- 
ical poisoning  in  all  the  Jap  maladies.  The  Japs  de- 
camped as  if  by  magic. 

Simultaneously  there  broke  out  from  Alaska  to 
Monterey  the  anti-Jap,  anti-Chinese,  anti-Hindu  agi- 
tation.    California's  exclusion  and  land  laws  became 


130     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

party  planks.  British  Columbia  got  round  it  by  a 
subterfuge.  She  had  the  Ottawa  government  rush 
through  an  order-in-council  known  as  "the  direct  pas- 
sage" law.  All  Orientals  at  that  time  were  coming  in 
by  way  of  Hawaii.  Ships  direct  from  India  were  not 
sailing.  They  stopped  at  Hong  Kong  and  Hawaii. 
The  order-in-councll  was  to  forbid  the  entrance  of 
Brown  Brothers  unless.  In  direct  passage  from  their 
own  land.  That  effectually  barred  the  Hindu  out,  till 
recently  when  a  Japanese  line,  to  test  the  Direct  Pas- 
sage Act,  brought  a  shipload  of  Hindus  direct  from 
India  to  Vancouver.  Vancouverltes  patrolled  docks 
and  would  not  let  them  land.  A  head  tax  of  five  hun- 
dred dollars  was  leveled  at  John  Chinaman.  That  didn't 
keep  John  Chinaman  out.  It  simply  raised  his  wages ; 
for  the  Chinese  boss  added  to  the  new  hand's  wages 
what  was  needed  to  pay  the  money  loaned  for  en- 
trance fee.  A  special  arrangement  was  made  with  the 
Mikado's  government  to  limit  Japanese  emigration 
to  a  few  hundreds  given  passports,  but  California 
went  the  whole  length  of  demanding  the  total  exclu- 
sion of  Brown  Brothers. 

Why.''  What  was  the  Pacific  Coast  afraid  of? 
When  the  State  Departments  of  the  United  States  and 
Canada  met  the  State  Department  of  the  Mikado, 
practically  what  was  said  was  this.  Only  in  very 
diplomatic  language : 

Whiteman:  "We  don't  object  to  your  students  and 


THE    COMING   OF    THE   ORIENTAL     131 

merchants  and  travelers,  but  what  we  do  object  to  Is 
the  coolies.  We  are  a  population  of  a  few  hundred 
thousands  in  British  Columbia,  of  less  than  tliree  mil- 
lion in  the  states  of  the  Pacific.  What  with  Chink 
and  Jap  and  Hindu,  you  are  hundreds  of  millions  of 
people.  If  we  admit  your  coolies  at  the  present  rate 
(eleven  thousand  had  tumbled  into  one  city  in  a  few 
months),  we  shall  presently  have  a  coolie  population 
of  millions.  We  don't  like  your  coolies  any  better 
than  you  do  yourself !    Keep  them  at  home !" 

This  conversation  is  paraphrased,  but  it  is  prac- 
tically the  substance  of  what  the  representative  of  the 
Ottawa  government  said  to  a  representative  of  the 
Mikado. 

Brown  Brother :  "We  don't  care  any  more  for  our 
coolies  than  you  do.  We  don't  in  fact,  care  a  hoot 
what  becomes  of  the  spawn  and  dregs  of  no-goods  in 
our  population.  We  are  not  individualists,  as  you 
white  men  are !  We  don't  aim  to  keep  the  unfit  cum- 
bering the  earth!  We  don't  care  a  hoot  for  these 
coolies ;  but  what  we  do  care  for  is  this — we  Orientals 
refuse  to  be  branded  any  longer  as  an  inferior  race. 
We'll  restrain  the  emigration  of  these  coolies  by  a 
passport  system;  but  don't  you  forget  It,  just  as  soon 
as  we  are  strong  enough,  in  the  friendliest,  kindest, 
suavest,  politest,  most  diplomatic  way  in  the  world, 
we  intend  not  to  be  branded  any  longer  as  an  Inferior 
race.    We  Intend  to  stand  shoulder  to  shoulder  with 


132     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

you  in  the  management  of  the  world's  affairs.  If  we 
don't  stand  up  to  the  job,  throw  us  down!  If  we 
stand  up  to  the  job — and  we  stood  up  moderately  in 
China  and  Russia  and  Belgium — we  don't  intend  to 
ask  you  for  the  sop  of  that  Christian  brotherhood 
preached  by  white  men.  We  intend  to  force  recogni- 
tion of  what  we  are  by  what  we  do.  We  ask  no  fa- 
vors, but  we  now  serve  you  notice  we  are  in  to  play 
the  game." 

Neither  is  this  conversation  a  free  translation. 
Shorn  of  diplomatic  kotowing  and  compliments  and 
circumlocutions,  it  is  exactly  what  the  Mikado's  rep- 
resentative served  to  the  representatives  of  three  great 
governments — Uncle  Sam's,  John  Bull's,  Miss  Can- 
ada's. If  you  ask  how  I  know,  I  answer — direct  from 
one  of  the  three  men  sent  to  Japan. 

Can  you  see  the  white  men's  eyes  pop  out  of  their 
heads  with  astonishment?  They  thought  they  were 
up  against  a  case  of  labor  union  jealousy,  and  they 
found  themselves  involved  in  a  complex  race  problem, 
dealing  with  three  aggressive  applicants  for  places 
at  the  councils  of  rulers  governing  the  world.  Cali- 
fornia was  ordered  to  turn  on  the  soft  pedal  and  do 
it  quick,  and  officially,  at  least,  she  did  for  a  time. 
Canada  was  ordered  to  lay  both  hands  across  her 
mouth  and  never  to  speak  above  a  whisper  of  the  whole 
Brown  Brother  problem;  and  England — well — Eng- 
land openly  took  the  Jappy-Chappy  at  his  word^ 


THE    COMING    OF    THE    ORIENTAL     133 

recognized  him  as  a  world  brother  and  entered  into 
the  famous  alliance.  And  the  coming  of  coolies  sud- 
denly stopped  to  the  United  States  and  Canada.  It 
didn't  stop  to  South  America  and  Mexico,  but  that  is 
another  play  of  the  game  with  facts  for  chessmen. 

Chinese  exclusion,  Japanese  exclusion,  Hindu  ex- 
clusion suddenly  became  party  shibboleths — always 
for  the  party  out  of  power,  never  for  the  party  in 
power.  The  party  in  power  kept  a  special  Maxim 
silencer  on  the  subject  of  Oriental  immigration.  The 
politician  in  office  kept  one  finger  on  his  lip  and  wore 
rubber-soled  shoes  whenever  an  almond-eyed  was  men- 
tioned. With  that  beautiful  consistency  which  only 
a  politician  has,  a  good  British  Columbia  member, 
who  rode  Oriental  exclusion  as  his  special  hobbyhorse, 
employed  a  Jap  cook.  In  the  midst  of  his  stump  cam- 
paign against  Orientals  he  found  in  the  room  of  his 
cook  original  drawings  of  Fort  Esquimalt,  of  Vancou- 
ver Harbor  and  of  Victoria  back  country.  I  was  in 
British  Columbia  at  the  time.  The  funny  thing  to  me 
was — all  British  Columbia  was  so  deadly  in  earnest  it 
didn't  see  the  funny  side  of  the  inconsistency. 


Ill 


I  was  up  and  down  the  Pacific  the  j'^ear  the  Mikado 
died,  and  chanced  to  be  in  San  Diego  the  month  that 
a  Japanese  warship  put  into  port  because  its  com- 


134.    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

mander  had  suicided  of  grief  over  the  Emperor's 
death.  The  ship  had  to  lie  in  port  till  a  new  com- 
mander came  out  from  Japan.  Japanese  coolies  were 
no  longer  coming;  but  the  Japanese  middies  had  the 
run  and  freedom  of  the  harbor;  and  they  sketched 
all  the  whereabouts  of  Point  Loma — purely  out  of 
interest  for  Mrs.  Tingley's  Theosophy,  of  course. 

Diaz's  ministry  had  been  very  hard  pressed  finan- 
cially before  being  ousted  by  Madero.  Some  Boston 
and  Pacific  Coast  men  had  secured  an  option  from  the 
Diaz  faction  of  the  sandy  reaches  known  as  Magda- 
leria  Bay  in  Lower  California.  The  Pacific  Coast  is 
a  land  of  few  good  natural  harbors;  especially  har- 
bors for  a  naval  station  and  target  practice.  Sud- 
denly an  unseen  hand  blocked  negotiations.  Within 
a  year  Japan  had  almost  leased  Magdalena  Bay,  when 
Uncle  Sam  wakened  up  and  ordered  "hands  off." 

Nicaragua  has  never  been  famous  as  a  great  fishing 
country.  Yet  Japanese  fishermen  tried  to  lease  fish- 
ing rights  there  and  may  have,  for  all  the  world 
knows.  In  spite  of  exclusion  acts,  they  already  domi- 
nate the  salmon  fishing  of  the  Pacific. 

Coaling  facilities  will  be  provided  for  the  merchant- 
men of  the  world  at  both  ends  of  Panama.  Yet  when 
England  and  France  began  furbishing  up  colonial 
stations  in  the  Caribbean,  Japan  forthwith  made  offers 
for  a  site  for  a  coaling  station  in  the  Gulf  of  Mexico. 


THE    COMING   OF    THE    ORIENTAL     135 

But  it  was  in  South  America  and  Mexico  that  the 
most  active  colonization  proceeded.  There  is  not  an 
American  diplomat  in  South  America  who  does  not 
know  this  and  who  has  not  reported  it — reported  it 
with  one  finger  on  both  lips  and  then  has  seen  his 
report  discreetly  smothered  in  departmental  pigeon- 
holes. Up  to  a  few  years  ago  Mexico  and  South 
America  were  enjoying  marvelous  prosperity.  Coffee 
had  not  collapsed  in  Brazil.  Banks  had  not  blown  up 
from  self -inflation  in  Argentina.  Revolution  at  home 
and  war  abroad  had  not  closed  mines  in  Mexico.  All 
hands  were  stretched  out  for  colonists.  Japan 
launched  vast  trans-Pacific  colonization  schemes. 
Ships  were  sent  scouting  commercial  possibilities  in 
South  America.  To  colonists  in  Chile  and  Peru,  fare 
was  in  many  cases  prepaid.  Money  was  loaned  to 
help  the  colonists  establish  themselves,  and  an  Amer- 
ican representative  to  one  of  these  countries  told  me 
that  free  passage  was  given  colonists  on  furlough 
home  if  they  would  go  back  to  the  colony.  There  is 
no  known  record  outside  Japan  of  the  numbers  of 
these  colonists.  And  Japan  asks — why  not.?  Does 
not  England  colonize ;  does  not  Germany  colonize ; 
does  not  France  colonize?  We  are  taking  our  place 
at  the  world  board  of  trade.  If  we  fail  to  make  good, 
throw  us  out.  If  we  make  good,  we  do  not  ask  "by 
your  leave." 


136     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

IV 

When  a  shipping  investigation  was  on  In  Wash- 
ington a  year  ago,  many  members  of  the  committee 
were  amazed  to  learn  that  Japan  already  controls 
seventy-two  per  cent,  of  the  shipping  on  the  Pacific. 
Ask  a  Chilean  or  Peruvian  whether  he  prefers  to 
travel  on  an  American  or  a  Japanese  ship.  He  laughs 
and  answers  that  American  ships  to  the  western  coast 
of  South  America  would  be  as  tubs  are  to  titanics — only 
until  the  new  registry  bill  passed  there  were  hardly 
any  ships  under  the  United  States  flag  on  the  South- 
ern Pacific.  Each  of  these  Japanese  ships  is  so  heav- 
ily subsidized  it  could  run  without  a  passenger  or  a 
cargo;  high  as  one  hundred  thousand  dollars  a  voy- 
age for  many  ships.  Its  crews  are  paid  eight  to  ten 
dollars  a  month,  where  American  and  Canadian  crews 
demand  and  get  forty  to  fifty  dollars.  In  cheapness 
of  labor,  in  efficiency  of  service,  in  government  aid 
and  style  of  building  no  American  nor  Canadian  ships 
can  stand  up  against  them.  And  again  Japan  asks — 
why  not.?  Atlantic  commerce  Is  a  prize  worth  four 
billions  a  year.  When  the  Orient  fully  awakens,  wiU 
Pacific  commerce  total  four  billions  a  year.-*  Who 
rules  the  sea  rules  the  world.  Japan's  ships  dominate 
seventy-two  per  cent,  of  the  Pacific's  commerce  now. 

So  when  the  war  broke  out,  Japan  shouldered  not 
the  white  man's  burden  but  the  Brown  Brother's  and 


THE    CO^HNG   OF    THE    ORIENTAL     137 

plunged  in  to  police  Asia.  Again — why  not?  As 
Uncle  Sam  polices  the  two  Americas,  and  John  Bull 
the  seas  of  the  world,  so  the  Mikado  undertakes  to 
police  the  sea  lanes  of  the  Orient.  The  Jappy  said 
when  he  met  the  diplomats  on  the  subject  of  coolie 
immigration  that  he  would  prove  himself  the  partner 
of  the  white  man  at  the  world's  council  boards — or 
step  back. 

Is  it  a  menace  or  a  portent?  Certainly  not  a  men- 
ace, when  accepted  as  a  matter  of  fact.  Only  the  fact 
must  be  faced  and  realized,  and  the  new  chessman's 
moves  recognized.  Uncle  Sam  has  the  police  job  of 
one  world,  South  America;  Great  Britain  of  another 
— ^Europe.  Will  the  little  Jappy-Chappy  take  the 
job  for  that  other  world,  where  the  Star  of  the  Orient 
seems  to  be  swinging  into  new  orbits?  The  Jappy- 
Chappy  isn't  saying  much;  but  he  is  essentially  on 
the  job  for  all  he  is  worth;  and  Canada  hasn't  wak- 
ened up  to  what  that  may  mean  to  her  Pacific  Coast. 


CHAPTER  IX 


THE  HINDU 


Is  IT,  then,  that  Canada  fears  the  growth  of  Japan 
as  a  great  world  power  ?  No,  the  thing  is  deeper  than 
that.  We  have  come  to  the  place  where  we  must  go 
deeper  than  surface  signs  and  use  neither  rose  water 
nor  kid  gloves.  The  question  of  the  Chinese  and  the 
Japanese  is  entirely  distinct  from  the  Hindu. 

If  you  think  that  shutting  your  eyes  to  what  you 
don't  want  to  know  and  stopping  your  nostrils  to  the 
stench  and  gathering  your  garments  up  and  passing 
by  on  the  other  side  ever  settled  a  difficult  question, 
then  the  Pacific  Coast  wishes  you  joy  to  your  system 
of  moral  sanitation ;  but  don't  offer  the  people  of  the 
Pacific  Coast  any  platitudinous  advice  about  admit- 
ting Asiatics.  They  know  what  they  are  doing.  You 
don't !  Theoretically  the  Asiatic  should  have  the  same 
liberty  to  come  and  go  with  Canada  as  Canadians 
have  to  come  and  go  with  the  Orient.  Theoretically, 
also,  the  colored  man  should  be  as  clean  and  upright 

138 


THE    HINDU  139 

and  free-and-equal  and  dependable  as  the  white  man; 
but  practically — in  an  anguish  that  has  cost  the  South 
blood  and  tears — practically  he  isn't.  The  theory 
does  not  work  out.  Neither  does  it  with  the  Asiatic. 
That  is,  it  does  not  work  out  at  close  range  on  the 
spot,  instead  of  the  width  of  half  a  continent  away. 

Canada  is  being  asked  to  decide  and  legislate  on  one 
of  the  most  vital  race  problems  that  ever  confronted 
a  nation.  She  is  also  being  asked  to  be  very  lily- 
handed  and  ladylike  and  dainty  about  it  all.  You 
must  not  explore  facts  that  are  not — "nice."  You 
must  not  ask  what  the  Westerner  means  when  he  says 
that  "the  Asiatic  will  not  affiliate  with  our  civiliza- 
tion." Is  it  more  than  white  teeth  and  pigments  of 
the  skin?  Is  it  more  than  skin  deep.''  Had  the  Old 
Book  some  deep  economic  reason  when  it  warned  the 
children  of  Israel  against  mixing  their  blood  with 
aliens  ?  Has  it  all  anything  to  do  with  the  centuries' 
cesspools  of  unbridled  \lce?  Is  that  the  reason  that 
women's  clubs — knowing  less  of  such  things — rather 
than  men's  clubs — are  begged  to  pass  fool  resolutions 
about  admitting  races  of  whose  living  practices  they 
know  absolutely  nothing.'' 

If  it  isn't  the  labor  unions  and  it  isn't  the  fear  of 
new  national  power  that  prejudice  against  the  Ori- 
ental— what  is  it?  Why  has  almost  every  woman's 
club  on  the  Pacific  passed  resolutions  against  the  ad- 
mission of  the  Oriental,  and  almost  every  woman's 


140     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

club  in  the  East  passed  resolutions  for  the  admission  ? 
Why  did  the  former  Minister  of  Labor  in  Canada  say 
that  "a  minimum  of  publicity  is  desired  upon  this 
subject"?  What  did  he  mean  when  he  declared  "that 
the  native  of  India  is  not  a  person  suited  to  this  coun- 
try"? If  the  native  Hindu  is  "not  a  person  suited 
to  Canada" — climate,  soil,  moisture,  what  not? — why 
isn't  that  fact  sufficient  to  exclude  the  Oriental  with- 
out any  legislation?  Italians  never  go  to  live  at  the 
North  Pole.  Nor  do  Eskimos  come  to  live  in  the 
tropics. 

You  may  ask  questions  about  Hindu  immigration 
till  you  are  black  in  the  face.  Unless  you  go  out  on 
the  spot  to  the  Pacific  Coast,  the  most  you  will  get 
for  an  answer  is  a  "hush."  And  it  would  not  be  such 
an  impossible  situation  if  the  other  side  were  also  go- 
ing around  with  a  finger  to  the  lip  and  a  "hush" ;  but 
the  Oriental  isn't.  The  Hindu  and  his  advocates  go 
from  one  end  of  Canada  to  the  other  clamoring  at  the 
tops  of  their  voices,  not  for  the  privilege,  but  for  the 
right,  of  admission  to  Canada,  the  right  to  vote,  the 
right  to  colonize.  At  the  time  the  first  five  or  six 
thousand  were  dumped  on  the  Pacific  Coast,  twenty 
thousand  more  were  waiting  to  take  passage ;  and  one 
hundred  thousand  more  were  waiting  to  take  passage 
after  them,  clamoring  for  the  right  of  admission,  the 
right  to  vote,  the  right  to  colonize.    Canada  welcomes 


THE    HINDU  141 

all  other  colonists.    Why  not  these?    The  minute  you 
ask,  you  are  told  to  "hush." 

South  Africa  and  Australia  "hushed"  so  very  hard 
and  were  so  very  careful  that  after  a  very  extensive 
experience — 150,000  Hindus  settled  in  one  colony — 
both  colonies  legislated  to  shut  them  out  altogether. 
At  least  South  Africa's  educational  test  amounted  to 
that,  and  South  Africa  and  Australia  are  quite  as 
imperial  as  Canada.  ^Vhy  did  they  do  it  ?  The  labor 
unions  were  no  more  behind  the  exclusion  in  those 
countries  than  in  British  Columbia.  The  labor  unions 
chuckled  with  glee  over  the  embarrassment  of  the 
whole  question. 

II 

Each  side  of  the  question  must  be  stated  plainly, 
not  as  my  personal  opinions  or  the  opinions  of  any 
one,  but  as  the  arguments  of  those  advocating  the 
free  admission  of  the  Hindu,  and  of  those  furiously 
opposing  the  free  admission. 

A  few  years  ago  British  Columbia  was  at  her  wit's 
ends  for  laborers — men  for  the  mills,  the  mines,  the 
railroads.  India  was  at  her  wit's  ends  because  of 
surplus  of  labor — labor  for  which  her  people  were 
glad  to  receive  three,  ten,  twenty  cents  a  day.  Her 
people  were  literally  starving  for  the  right  to  live. 
It  does  not  matter  much  who  acted  as  the  connecting 


142     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

link — ^the  sawmill  owners,  the  canneries,  the  railroads, 
or  the  steamships.  The  steamship  lines  and  the  saw- 
mill men  seem  to  have  been  the  combined  sinners.  The 
.mills  wanted  labor.  The  steamship  lines  saw  a  chance 
I  to  transport  laborers  at  the  rate  of  twenty  thousand 
a  year  to  and  from  India.  The  Hindus  came  tum- 
bling in  at  the  rate  of  six  thousand  in  a  single  year, 
when,  suddenly,  British  Columbia,  inert  at  first,  awak- 
ened and  threatened  to  secede  or  throw  the  newcomers 
into  the  sea.  By  intervention  of  the  Imperial  govern- 
ment and  the  authorities  of  India  a  sort  of  subterfuge 
was  rigged  up  in  the  immigration  laws.  The  Hindus 
had  been  booked  to  British  Columbia  via  Hong  Kong 
and  Hawaii.  The  most  of  the  Japs  had  come  by  way 
of  Hawaii.  To  kill  two  birds  with  one  stone,  by 
order-in-council  in  Ottawa,  the  regulation  was  en- 
acted forbidding  the  admission  of  immigrants  except 
on  continuous  passage  from  the  land  of  birth.  Can- 
ada's immigration  law  also  permits  great  latitude  in 
interpretation  as  to  the  amount  of  money  that  must 
be  possessed  by  the  incoming  settlers.  Ordinarily  it 
lis  fifty  dollars  for  winter,  twenty-five  dollars  for  sum- 
mer, with  a  five  hundred  dollar  poll  tax  against  the 
Chinaman.  The  Hindus  were  required  to  have  two 
hundred  and  fifty  dollars  on  their  person. 

One  wonders  at  the  simplicity  of  a  nation  that  hopes 
to  fence  itself  in  safety  behind  laws  that  are  pure  sub- 
terfuge.    The   subterfuge  has  but  added  irritation 


THE    HINDU  14S 

to  friction.  What  was  to  hinder  a  direct  line  of  steam- 
ships going  into  operation  any  day?  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  to  force  the  issue,  to  force  the  Dominion  to 
declare  the  status  of  the  Oriental,  a  Japanese  ship 
early  in  1914  did  come  direct  from  India  with  a  cargo 
of  angry  armed  Hindus  demanding  entrance.  Canada 
refused  to  relent.  The  ship  lay  in  harbor  for  months 
unable  to  land  its  colonists,  and  a  Dominion  cruiser 
patrolled  Vancouver  water  to  prevent  actual  armed 
conflict.  When  the  final  decision  ordered  the  colonists 
on  board  deported,  knives  and  rifles  were  brandished; 
and  Hopkinson,  the  secret  service  man  employed  by 
British  authorities,  was  openly  shot  to  death  a  few 
weeks  later  in  a  Vancouver  court  room  by  a  band  of 
Hindu  assassins.  "We  are  glad  we  did  it,"  declared 
the  murderers  when  arrested.  Hopkinson  himself  had 
come  from  India  and  was  hated  and  feared  owing  to 
his  secret  knowledge  of  revolutionary  propaganda 
among  the  Vancouver  Hindus,  who  were  posing  as 
patriots  and  British  subjects.  The  fact  that  many 
thousands  of  Sikhs  and  Hindus  had  just  been  hur- 
ried across  Canada  in  trains  with  blinds  down  to  fight 
for  the  empire  in  Europe  added  tragic  complexity  to 
an  already  impossible  situation. 

The  leaders  of  the  Hindu  party  in  Canada  haid 
already  realized  that  more  immigration  was  not  ad- 
visable till  they  had  stronger  backing  of  public  opin- 
ion in  Canada,  and  a  campaign  of  publicity  was  begun 


144»     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

from  Nova  Scotia  to  the  Pacific  Coast.  Churches, 
women's  missionary  societies,  women's  clubs,  men's 
clubs  were  addressed  by  Hindu  leaders  from  one  end 
of  Canada  to  the  other.  It  did  not  improve  the  temper 
of  some  of  these  leaders  posing  in  flowing  garments 
of  white  as  mystic  saints  before  audiences  of  women 
to  know  that  Hopkinson,  the  secret  agent,  was  on 
their  trail  In  the  shadow  with  proofs  of  criminal  rec- 
ords on  the  part  of  these  same  leaders.  These  crim- 
inal records  Hopkinson  would  willingly  have  exposed 
had  the  Imperial  government  not  held  his  hand. 
When  I  was  In  Vancouver  he  called  to  see  me  and 
promised  me  a  full  exposure  of  the  facts,  but  before 
speaking  cabled  for  permission  to  speak.  Permission 
was  flatly  refused,  and  I  was  told  that  I  was  investi- 
gating things  altogether  too  deeply.  I  can  see  the 
secret  agent's  face  yet — as  he  sat  bursting  with  facts 
repressed  by  Imperial  order — a  solemn,  strong,  re- 
lentless man,  sad  and  savage  with  the  knowledge  he 
could  not  use.  Without  Hopkinson's  aid,  it  was  not 
difficult  to  get  the  facts.  Canada  Is  a  country  of 
party  government.  One  party  had  just  been  ousted 
from  power,  and  another  party  had  just  come  in. 
While  I  was  waiting  for  permission  from  Ottawa  to 
obtain  facts  in  the  open.  Information  came  to  me  vol- 
untarily with  proofs  through  the  wife  of  a  former 
secret  agent. 

It  did  not  make  things  easier  for  Hopkinson  that 


THE    HINDU  145 

the  whole  dispute  as  to  Hindu  immigration  was  rele- 
gated into  that  doubtful  resort  of  all  ambiguous  poli- 
tics— "the  twilight  zone" — or  the  doubtful  borderland 
where  provincial  powers  end  and  federal  powers  begin 
and  Imperial  powers  intervene.  England  was  shoving 
the  burden  of  decision  on  the  Dominion,  and  the  Do- 
minion was  shoving  the  burden  on  the  Province  of 
British  Columbia,  and  to  evade  responsibility  each 
government  was  shuttling  the  thing  back  and  for- 
ward, weaving  a  tangle  of  hate  and  misunderstanding 
which  culminated  in  Hopkinson's  assassination  in 
1914. 

As  "the  twilight  zone"  between  provincial  and  fed- 
eral rights  comes  up  here,  it  should  be  considered  and 
emphasized ;  for  it  is  the  one  great  weakness  of  every 
federation.  WJio  is  to  do  what — when  neither  govern- 
ment wants  to  assume  responsibility.''  Who  is  to  en- 
force laws,  when  neither  government  wants  to  father 
them.?  It  was  this  gave  such  passion  to  Vancouver's 
resentment  in  Hindu  immigration.  Indeed  this  very 
question  of  "a  twilight  zone"  gives  pause  to  many  an 
Imperial  Federationist.  In  a  dispute  of  this  sort,  in- 
volving the  parts  of  the  empire,  could  England  give 
force  to  an  exclusion  act  without  losing  the  allegiance 
to  her  British  Empire? 

Every  conceivable  argument  has  been  used  In  this 
Hindu  dispute.  I  want  to  emphasize — they  are  argu- 
ments, used  for  argument's  sake — not  reasons.     The 


146    THE    CANADIAN   COMMONWEALTH 

plain  brutal  bald  reasons  on  each  side  of  the  dispute 
are  British  Columbia  does  not  want  the  Hindus.  The 
Hindus  want  British  Columbia.  Simultaneously  with 
the  campaign  for  publicity  action  was  taken:  (1)  to 
force  the  resident  Hindu  on  the  voters'  list;  (2)  to 
break  down  the  immigration  laws  by  demanding  the 
entrance  of  wives  and  families;  (3)  to  force  recogni- 
tion of  the  status  of  the  Oriental  by  bringing  them  in 
the  ships  of  Japan — England's  ally. 

If  the  resident  Hindu  had  a  vote — and  as  a  British 
subject,  why  not? — and  if  he  could  break  down  the 
immigration  exclusion  act,  he  could  out-vote  the  na- 
tive-born Canadian  in  ten  years.  In  Canada  are  five 
and  one-half  million  native  born,  two  million  aliens. 
In  India  are  hundreds  of  millions  breaking  the  dykes 
of  their  own  national  barriers  and  ready  to  flood  any 
open  land.  Take  down  the  barriers  on  the  Pacific 
Coast,  and  there  would  be  ten  million  Hindus  in  Can- 
ada in  ten  years.  The  drawing  of  Japan  into  the 
quarrel  by  chartering  a  Japanese  ship  was  a  crafty 
move.  Japan  is  the  empire's  ally.  Offense  to  Japan 
means  war. 


Ill 


The  arguments  from  both  sides  I  set  down  in  utter 
disinterest  personally.    Here  they  are : 

We  need  room  for  colonization — says  the  Hindu. 


THE    HINDU  147 

Let  England  lose  India,  and  she  loses  five-sixths  of 
the  British  Empire.  By  refusing  admission  to  the 
Hindu,  Canada  is  endangering  British  dominion  in 
India.  Moral  conditions  there  are  appalling,  of 
course ;  but  say  the  missionaries — give  these  people  a 
chance,  and  they  will  become  as  good  as  any  of  us. 
Are  we  not  sprung  from  the  same  Aryan  stock  ? 

British  Columbia  has  immense  tracts  of  arable  land. 
Why  not  give  India's  millions  a  chance  on  it  as  colon- 
izers ? 

There  is  not  so  much  sedition  among  the  Hindus  of 
British  Columbia  as  among  Canadian-born  Socialists, 
who  rant  of  the  flag  as  "the  bloody  rag." 

The  vices  of  the  Hindu  are  no  worse  than  the  vices 
of  the  low  whites. 

They  are  British  subjects  and  have  a  right  to  ad- 
mission.   Admission  is  not  a  privilege  but  a  right. 

How  can  we  expect  good  morals  among  three  to  five 
thousand  men  who  are  forcibly  separated  from  wives 
and  children  ?  Admit  their  wives  to  prevent  deteriora- 
tion. This  argument  was  used  by  a  Hindu  addressing 
audiences  in  Toronto. 

What  right  have  Canadians  to  point  the  finger  of 
scorn  at  the  reproach  of  the  child  wife  when  the  age 
of  marriage  in  one  province  is  twelve  years  ? 

In  the  days  of  the  mutiny  the  Sikh  proved  his  loy- 
alty. To-day  the  Indian  troops  are  proving  their 
loyalty  by  fighting  for  the  empire  in  Europe. 


148     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

Many  of  the  Canadians  now  denouncing  the  Hindu 
made  money  selling  them  real  estate  in  Vancouver, 
and  expropriation  is  behind  the  idea  of  exclusion. 

The  admission  of  the  Hindu  would  relieve  British 
Columbia's  great  need  for  manual  laborers. 

Canadian  missionaries  to  India  are  received  as 
friends.  Why  are  the  Hindus  not  received  as  friends 
in  Canada  .f* 

Why  should  a  Sikh  not  marry  a  white  woman  as 
one  did  in  Vancouver.?  This  question  was  asked  by 
the  official  publication  of  the  Sikhs  in  Vancouver. 

If  Canada  shuts  her  doors  to  the  Hindus,  let  the 
Hindus  shut  doors  to  Canadians. 

These  are  not  my  arguments.  They  are  the  argu- 
ments of  the  people  advocating  the  free  admission  of 
people  from  India  to  Canada. 

To  these  arguments  the  Pacific  Coast  makes  an- 
swer.   Likewise,  the  answer  is  not  mine : 

We  know  that  you  as  a  people  need  room  for  col- 
onization ;  but  if  we  admit  you  as  colonists,  will  your 
presence  drive  out  other  colonists,  as  it  has  done  in 
Australia  and  South  Africa ;  as  the  presence  of  colored 
people  prevents  the  coming  of  other  colonists  to  the 
southern  states.?  If  we  have  to  decide  between  hav- 
ing you  and  excluding  Canadians,  or  excluding  you 
and  having  Canadians,  we  can  not  afford  to  hesitate 
in  our  decision.  We  must  keep  our  own  land  for  our 
own  people. 


THE    HINDU  149 

[Australia  and  South  Africa  have  excluded  the 
Hindu — South  Africa's  educational  test  amounts  to 
that — and  that  has  not  imperiled  British  dominion 
in  India.  Why  should  it  in  Canada?  The  very  fact 
there  are  millions  ready  to  come  is  what  alarms  us. 
Morals  are  low — you  acknowledge — and  your  people 
would  be  better  if  they  had  a  chance;  but  would  the 
chance  not  cost  us  too  dearly,  as  the  improvement  of 
the  blacks  has  cost  the  South  in  crime  and  contami- 
nated blood?  We  are  sorry  for  you,  just  as  we  are 
sorry  for  any  plague-stricken  region;  but  we  do  not 
welcome  you  among  us  because  of  that  pity. 

There  may  not  be  so  much  sedition  among  the  Hin- 
dus of  British  Columbia  as  among  Canadian-born 
SociaHsts,  who  rant  of  the  flag  as  "a  bloody  rag" ;  but 
our  Socialistic  seditionists  have  never  yet  been  accused 
of  collecting  two  million  dollars  to  send  home  to  India 
to  buy  rifles  for  the  revolution.  Canadian  Socialists 
have  never  yet  collected  one  dime  to  buy  rifles.  These 
are  not  my  accusations.  They  are  accusations  that 
have  been  in  the  very  air  of  Vancouver  and  San  Fran- 
cisco. If  they  are  true,  they  ought  to  be  proved  true. 
If  they  are  untrue,  they  ought  to  be  proved  untrue ; 
but  in  view  of  the  shoutings  over  patriotism  and  of 
Hopklnson's  assassination,  they  come  with  a  rude  jar 
to  claims  grounded  on  loyalty.  Could  Hindus  who 
landed  in  British  Columbia  destitute  a  few  years  ago 
possibly  have  that  amount  of  money  among  them?    At 


150     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

last  census  they  had  property  jn  Vancouver  alone  to 
the  amount  of  six  million  dollars,  held  collectively  for 
the  whole  community. 

Their  vices  may  be  no  worse  than  the  vices  of  the 
low  whites,  but  if  immigration  officials  find  that  whites 
low  or  high  have  vices,  those  whites  are  excluded,  be 
they  English,  Irish,  Scotch,  or  Greek. 

The  Hindus  are  British  subjects,  but  Canada  does 
not  admit  British  subjects  unless  she  wants  them — 
unless  they  can  give  a  clean  bill  of  health  and  morals. 

Canada  does  not  regard  admission  as  a  right  to 
any  race,  European,  Asian,  African.  She  considers 
her  citizenship  a  privilege  and  reserves  to  herself  the 
right  to  extend  or  not  to  extend  that  privilege  to  whom 
she  wiU. 

That  separation  from  families  will  excuse  base  and 
lewd  morals  is  a  view  that  Canada  will  never  admit. 
Her  sons  go  forth  unaccompanied  by  wives  or  sisters 
to  lumber  camps  and  mines  and  pioneer  shacks,  and 
in  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred  come  back  clean 
as  they  went  forth,  and  manlier.  That  women  should 
be  victims  on  an  altar  of  lust  is  an  argument  that  may 
appeal  to  the  Asiatic — ^the  sentiment  all  draped  in 
wisteria  and  lilies,  of  course ;  but  it  isn't  an  argument 
that  will  prove  anything  in  Canada  but  the  advocate's 
unfitness  for  citizenship. 

What  reason  have  Canadians  to  point  the  finger  of 
reproach  at  the  Institution  of  the  child  wife,  when  the 


THE    HINDU  151 

age  of  marriage  in  one  province  is  low  as  twelve? 
And  that  brings  up  the  whole  question  of  the  child 
wife.  Because  one  province  has  the  marriage  age  crim- 
inally low  does  not  prove  that  that  province  approves 
of  marriages  at  twelve.  In  the  whole  history  of  that 
province  marriages  at  that  age  have  been  as  rare  as 
the  pastime  of  skinning  a  man  alive,  and  that  prov- 
ince has  no  specific  law  against  skinning  a  man  alive. 
It  has  no  such  law  because  that  type  of  crime  is  un- 
known. But  can  it  be  said  that  the  institution  of 
child  marriage  is  an  unknown  or  even  a  rare  crime  in 
India.''  The  Hindu  wives  for  whom  loud  outcry  is 
being  made  are  httle  girls  barely  eight  years  of  age, 
whom  before  marriage  the  husbands  have  never  seen, 
men  of  thirty-five  and  forty  and  forty-eight.  Does 
Canada  desire  the  system  of  the  child  wife  embodied 
in  her  national  life.?  Suppose  one  hundred  thousand 
Hindu  colonists  came  to  the  vacant  arable  lands  of 
British  Columbia.  As  the  inalienable  right  of  a  Brit- 
ish subject,  the  colonist  must  be  allowed  to  bring  in 
his  wife.  What  if  she  is  a  child  to  whom  he  was  mar- 
ried in  her  infancy?  The  colonist  being  a  British 
subject  is  to  be  given  a  vote.  How  would  Canada 
abolish  the  child  wife  system  if  Hindu  votes  outnum- 
bered Canadian  votes?  Forget  all  about  the  rifle 
fund — the  discovery  of  which  was  paid  for  in  Hop- 
kinson's  life !  Forget  all  about  labor  and  mill  owner 
and  color  of  pigments !    You  know  now  why  the  Ori- 


152    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

ental  question  is  more  than  skin-deep.  Go  a  little 
deeper  in  this  child-wife  thing!  Don't  balk  at  the 
horror  of  it!  The  Pacific  Coast  wants  you  to  know 
a  few  medical  facts.  Hundreds  of  thousands  of  chil- 
dren in  India,  age  from  nine  to  twelve,  are  wives  ac- 
tually living  with  husbands ;  and  the  husbands  are  in 
many  cases  from  thirty  to  eighty  years  of  age. 
Anglo-Saxons  regard  these  unions  as  criminal.  One- 
third  of  all  children  born  of  mothers  under  sixteen 
years  of  age  die  in  infancy  because  of  the  tortures  to 
the  mother's  body,  compared  to  which  the  tortures  of 
the  Inquisition  were  merciful.  Does  Canada  want 
that  system  embodied  in  her  national  life?  Under 
Canadian  law  such  crimes  are  treated  to  thirty-nine 
lashes :  under  American  law  to  Judge  Lynch.  Twenty- 
five  per  cent,  of  the  women  of  India  die  prematurely 
because  of  the  crimes  perpetrated  through  child  mar- 
riage. Twenty-five  per  cent,  become  invalids  from 
the  same  cause.  Nine  million  girl  wives  in  India  are 
under  fifteen  years  of  age;  two  million  are  under 
eleven. 

I  asked  a  British  Columbia  sawmill  owner  why  the 
Hindu  could  not  speed  up  with  a  Pole  or  Swede. 

"No  stamina,"  he  answered.  "Too  many  genera- 
tions of  vice!  Too  many  generations  of  birth  from 
immature  mothers ;  no  dower  of  strength  from  birth." 

The  advocates  of  Hindu  colonization  in  Canada 
glibly  advise  "prohibiting  child  wives."     To  bar  out 


THE    HINDU  153 

child  wives  sounds  easy.  How  are  you  to  know  they 
are  child  wives  and  not  daughters  ?  If  one  thing  more 
than  another  has  been  established  in  Vancouver  about 
Hindus,  not  excepting  the  leaders,  it  is  that  you  can 
not  believe  a  Hindu  under  oath.  Also  British  law 
does  not  allow  you  to  bar  out  a  subject's  wife  unless 
she  be  diseased  or  vicious.  If  you  let  down  the  bar 
to  any  section  of  the  Hindu,  teeming  millions  will 
come — ^with  a  demand  to  vote. 

That  Canada's  continuous  passage  law  is  immoral 
and  intolerable  no  one  denies.  It  is  a  subterfuge  and 
a  joke.  The  day  the  Japanese  steamship  tested  the 
law  by  bringing  passengers  direct  from  land  of  birth 
the  law  fell  down  and  Canada  had  to  face  squarely 
the  question  of  exclusion.  As  the  world  knows,  the 
shipload  of  human  cargo  after  lying  for  months  in 
Vancouver  Harbor  was  sent  back,  and  Hindu  leaders 
proved  their  claims  of  a  right  to  citizenship  by  as- 
sassinating Hopkinson. 

To  the  claim  that  the  Sikhs  are  loyal,  Canada  an- 
swers— "for  their  own  sake."  If  British  protection 
were  withdrawn  from  India  to-morrow,  a  thousand 
petty  chiefs  would  fly  at  one  another's  throats.  The 
idea  that  expropriation  is  behind  exclusion  could  be 
entertained  only  by  an  Oriental  mind.  Expropria- 
tion is  possible  under  Canadian  law  only  for  treason. 
Imperial  unity  is  no  more  threatened  in  Canada  by 
exclusion  than  it  was  threatened  in  South  Africa  and 


154     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

Australia.  The  Hindus  are  adapted  to  the  cultivation 
of  the  soil,  but  if  they  come  in  millions,  will  any  white 
race  sit  down  beside  them?  Why  does  immigration 
persistently  refuse  to  go  to  the  southern  states? 
Because  of  a  black  shadow  over  the  land.  Does  Can- 
ada want  such  a  shadow? 

The  missionary  argument  can  hardly  be  taken  seri- 
ously. Missionaries  do  not  go  to  India  to  colonize. 
They  do  not  introduce  white  vices.  They  go  at  Can- 
ada's expense  to  give  free  medical  and  social  service 
to  India. 

"Why  should  a  Sikh  not  marry  a  white  woman?'* 
There,  again,  you  are  up  against  a  side  of  the  subject 
that  is  neither  violet  water  nor  pink  tea ;  but — it  is  a 
vital  side  of  the  subject.  For  the  same  reason  that 
the  South  objects  to  and  passes  laws  against  mixed 
unions  of  the  races.  These  laws  are  not  the  registra- 
tion of  prejudice.  They  are  the  registration  of  ter- 
rible lessons  in  experience.  It  is  not  a  matter  of 
opinion.  It  is  a  matter  of  fact.  What  is  feared  is 
not  the  marriage  of  a  Sikh  who  is  refined  to  a  white 
woman  who  knows  what  she  is  doing.  What  is  feared 
is  the  effect  of  that  union  on  the  lewd  Hindu;  the 
effect  on  the  safety  of  the  uncultured  white  woman 
and  white  girl.  Any  one  on  the  Coast  who  has  lived 
next  to  Asiatics,  any  one  in  India  or  the  Philippines 
knows  what  this  means  in  terms  of  hideous  terrible 


THE    HINDU  155 

fact  that  can  not  be  set  down  here.  Vancouver  knows. 
"I'll  see,"  said  an  officer  in  the  Philippines  of  his 
native  valet,  "that  the — dog  turns  up  missing;"  and 
every  man  present  knew  why ;  and  when  the  officer  set 
out  on  an  unnamed  expedition  with  his  valet,  the  valet 
did  "turn  up  missing."  There  are  vices  for  which  a 
white  man  kills.  "Have  not  the  English  carried  vices 
to  India?"  a  Hindu  protagonist  asked  me.  Yes,  an- 
swered British  Columbia,  but  we  do  not  purpose  poi- 
soning the  new  young  life  of  Canada  to  compensate 
the  vices  of  English  soldiers  who  have  gone  to  pieces 
morally  in  India. 

As  to  shutting  Canadians  out  of  India,  Canada 
would  accept  that  challenge  gladly.  When  Canadians 
carry  vices  to  India — says  Canada — shut  them  out. 

These  are  the  reasons  given  for  the  Pacific  Coast's 
aversion  to  the  Hindu,  and  even  with  the  arguments 
stated  explicitly,  there  is  a  great  deal  untold  and 
untellable. 

For  instance,  some  of  the  leaders  talking  loudest  in 
Eastern  Canada  in  the  name  of  the  Sikh  are  not  Sikhs 
at  all,  and  one  at  least  has  a  criminal  record  in  San 
Francisco. 

For  instance  again,  when  the  coronation  festivities 
were  on  in  England,  there  was  a  very  peculiar  guard 
kept  round  the  Hindu  quarters.  It  would  be  well  for 
some  of  the  eastern  women's  clubs  to  inquire  why  that 


156     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

was ;  also  why  the  fact  was  hushed  up  that  two  white 
women  of  bad  character  were  carried  out  of  that  com- 
pound dead. 

Said  a  mill  owner,  one  who  employs  many  Hindus, 
*'If  the  East  could  understand  how  some  of  these  pen- 
niless leaders  grow  rich,  they  would  realize  that  the 
Hindu  has  our  employment  sharks  beaten  to  a  frazzle. 
I  take  in  a  new  man  from  one  of  these  leaders.  The 
leader  gets  two  dollars  or  five  dollars  for  finding  this 
fellow  a  job.  I  have  barely  got  the  man  broken  in 
when  the  leader  yanks  him  off  to  another  job  and  sends 
me  a  new  man,  getting,  of  course,  the  employment 
agent  fee  for  both  changes." 

"But  why  not  let  them  come  out  here  and  work 
and  go  back.'"'  asks  the  East. 

Because  that  is  just  what  the  Hindu  will  not  do. 
When  he  comes,  he  fights  for  the  franchise  to  stay. 
That  is  the  real  meaning  behind  the  fight  over  cases 
now  in  the  courts. 

"They  are  curious  fellows,  poor  beggars,"  said  a 
police  court  official  to  me.  "They  have  no  more  con- 
ception of  what  truth  means  than  a  dog  stealing  a 
bone.  We  had  a  Hindu  come  in  here  as  complainant 
against  another  man,  with  his  back  hacked  to  beef 
steak.  We  had  very  nearly  sent  the  defendant  up  for 
a  long  term  in  the  *pen,'  when  we  got  wind  that  these 
two  fellows  had  been  bitter  enemies — old  spites — and 
that  there  was  something  queer  about  the  complain- 


THE    HINDU  157 

ant's  shanty.  We  sent  out  to  examine.  The  fellow 
had  stuck  bits  of  glass  all  over  the  inside  of  his  shack 
walls  and  then  cut  his  own  back  to  pay  an  old  grudge 
against  the  other  man.  Another  fellow  rushed  in  here 
gesticulating  complaint,  who  was  literally  soaked  in 
blood.  We  had  had  our  experience  and  so  sending 
for  an  interpreter,  we  soused  this  fellow  into  a  bath- 
tub. Every  dab  came  off  and  there  was  not  a  scratch 
under." 

"You  say  the  Hindu  is  the  negro  problem  multiplied 
by  ten,  plus  craft,"  said  a  life-long  resident  of  India 
to  me.  "That  is  hardly  correct.  The  Hindu  is  dif- 
ferent from  the  negro.  He  is  intellectual  and  spir- 
itual as  well  as  crafty  and  sensuous.  You  will  never 
have  trouble  with  the  Hindu,  if  you  keep  him  in  his 
place — " 

"But  do  you  think  a  democratic  country  can  what 
you  call  *keep  a  race  in  its  place'.?  The  very  genius 
of  our  democracy  is  that  we  want  each  individual  to 
come  up  out  of  his  place  to  a  higher  place." 

*'Then  you  will  learn  a  hard  lesson  here  in  Canada." 

What  kind  of  a  lesson?  Again,  let  us  take  facts, 
not  opinions ! 

A  clergyman's  wife  in  Vancouver,  full  of  mission- 
ary zeal  for  India,  thought  it  her  duty  to  accord  the 
Hindu  exactly  the  same  treatment  as  to  an  American 
or  English  immigrant.  She  took  a  man  as  general 
house  servant  and  treated  him  with  the  same  genial 


158     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

courtesy  she  had  treated  all  other  help  in  her  home. 
You  know  what  is  coming — don't  you?  The  man 
mistook  it  for  evil  or  else  failed  to  subdue  the  crimes 
of  the  centuries  in  his  own  blood.  Had  he  not  come 
from  a  land  where  a  woman  more  or  less  did  not  mat- 
ter, and  hundreds  of  thousands  of  little  girls  are 
yearly  sacrificed  on  the  altars  of  Moloch  ?  I  need  not 
give  details.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  are  none. 
Asiatic  ideas  about  women  collided  violently  with 
facts  which  any  Canadian  takes  for  granted  and  does 
not  talk  about!  No  Anglo-Saxon  (thank  God)  is  too 
ladylike  not  to  have  a  bit  of  the  warrior  woman  left 
in  her  blood.  The  Hindu  was  thrown  out  of  that 
house.  Then  the  woman  reasoned  with  the  blind  per- 
sistence peculiar  to  any  conscientious  good  woman, 
who  always  puts  theory  in  place  of  fact !  There  are 
blackguards  in  ever}'^  race.  There  are  scoundrels  among 
Englishmen  in  India.  Why  should  she  allow  one  crim- 
inal among  the  Hindus  to  prejudice  her  against  this 
whole  people?  And  she  at  once  took  another  Hindu 
man  servant  in  the  house.  This  time  she  kept  him  in 
the  kitchen  and  garden.  Within  a  month  the  same 
thing  happened  with  a  little  daughter.  This  Hindu 
also  went  out  on  his  head.  No  more  were  employed 
in  that  house.  That  woman's  husband  was  one  of 
the  Pacific  Coast  clergymen  who  passed  the  resolution, 
"that  the  Hindus  would  not  affiliate  with  our  Cana- 
dian civilization.'* 


THE    HINDU  159 

Personally  I  think  that  resolution  would  have  been 
a  great  deal  more  enlightening  to  the  average  East- 
erner if  the  ministerial  association  had  plainly  called 
a  spade  a  spade. 


IV 


With  the  Chinaman  conditions  are  different.  In  the 
first  place,  since  China  obtained  freedom  from  the  old 
cast-iron  dynasty,  Chinamen  have  not  wanted  to  col- 
onize in  Canada.  The  leaders  of  the  young  China 
party  laid  their  plots  and  published  their  liberty  jour- 
nals from  presses  in  the  basement  of  Vancouver  and 
Victoria  shops,  but  having  gained  their  liberty,  they 
went  back  to  China.  The  Chinaman  does  not  want  to 
colonize.  He  does  not  want  a  vote.  He  wants  only  to 
earn  his  money  on  the  Pacific  Coast  and  hoard  it  and 
go  home  to  China  with  it.  The  fact  that  he  does  not 
want  to  remain  in  the  country  but  comes  only  to  work 
and  go  back  has  always  been  used  as  an  argument 
against  him.  Neither  does  he  consider  himself  your 
equal.  Nor  does  he  want  to  marry  your  daughter,  nor 
have  you  consider  him  a  prince  of  the  royal  blood  in 
disguise — a  pose  in  which  the  little  Jap  is  as  great  an 
adept  as  the  English  cockney  who  drops  enough  "h's" 
to  build  a  monument,  all  the  while  he  is  telling  you  of 
his  royal  blue  blood.  If  you  mistake  the  Chinaman 
for  a  prince  in  disguise,  the  results  will  be  just  what 


160     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

they  were  with  a  poor  girl  in  New  York  four  or  five 
years  ago.  The  results  will  be  just  what  they  always 
are  when  you  mistake  a  mongrel  for  a  thoroughbred. 

All  the  same,  dismiss  the  idea  from  your  mind  that 
labor  is  behind  the  opposition  to  Chinese  immigration ! 
A  few  years  ago,  when  Oriental  labor  came  tumbling 
into  British  Columbia  at  the  rate  of  twelve  thousand  in 
a  single  year — when  the  Chinese  alone  had  come  to 
number  fifteen  or  sixteen  thousand — labor  was  alarmed ; 
but  a  twofold  change  has  taken  place  since  that  time. 
First,  labor  has  found  that  it  can  better  control  the 
Chinaman  by  letting  him  enter  Canada,  than  by  keep- 
ing him  in  China  and  letting  the  product  of  cheap 
labor  come  in.  Second,  the  Chinaman  has  demon- 
strated his  solidarity  as  a  unit  in  the  labor  war.  If  he 
comes,  he  will  not  foregather  with  capital.  That  is 
certain!  He  will  affiliate  with  the  unions  for  higher 
wages. 

*'If  the  Chinaman  comes  in  here  lowering  the  price 
of  goods  and  the  price  of  labor,"  said  the  agitator  a 
few  years  ago,  "we'll  put  a  poll  tax  of  five  hundred 
dollars  on  and  make  him  pay  for  his  profit."  The  poll 
tax  was  put  on  every  Chinaman  coming  into  Canada, 
but  do  you  think  John  Chinaman  pays  it.'*  It  is  a  way 
that  unjust  laws  have  of  coming  back  in  a  boomerang. 
The  Chinaman  doesn't  pay  it !  Mr.  Canadian  House- 
holder paid  it ;  for  no  sooner  was  the  poll  tax  imposed 
than  up  went  wages  for  household  servant  and  laun- 


THE    HINDU  161 

dryman  and  gardener,  from  ten  to  fifteen  dollars  a 
month  to  forty  and  forty-five  and  fifty  dollars  a 
month.  The  Italian  boss  system  came  in  vogue,  when 
the  rich  Chinaman  who  paid  the  entrance  tax  for  his 
*'slaves"  farmed  out  the  labor  at  a  profit  to  himself. 
The  system  was  really  one  of  indentured  slavery  till 
the  immigration  authorities  went  after  it.  Then  Chi- 
nese benevolent  associations  were  formed.  Up  went 
wages  automatically.  The  cook  would  no  longer  do 
the  work  of  the  gardener.  When  the  boy  you  hired 
at  twenty-five  dollars  had  learned  his  job,  he  suddenly 
disappeared  one  morning.  His  substitute  explains  he 
has  had  to  go  away;  "he  is  sick;"  any  excuse;  with 
delightful  lapses  of  English  when  you  ask  questions. 
You  find  out  that  your  John  has  taken  a  job  at  forty 
dollars  a  month,  and  you  are  breaking  in  a  new  green 
hand  for  the  Chinese  benevolent  association  to  send 
up  to  a  higher  job.  If  you  kick  against  the  trick,  you 
may  kick !  There  are  more  jobs  than  men.  That's  the 
way  you  pay  the  five  hundred  dollars  poll  tax;  com- 
ical, isn't  it;  or  it  would  be  comical  if  the  average 
white  householder  did  not  find  it  five  hundred  dollars 
more  than  the  average  income  can  spare  ?  So  the  labor 
leaders  chuckle  at  this  subterfuge,  as  they  chuckle  at 
the  "continuous"  passage  law. 

For  a  time  the  indentured  slavery  system  worked  al- 
most criminally ;  for  if  the  newcomer,  ignorant  of  the 
law  and  the  language,  got  wise  to  the  fact  that  his 


162    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

boss  was  doing  what  was  illegal  under  Canadian  law, 
and  attempted  to  jump  his  serfdom,  he  was  liable — as 
one  of  them  expressed  it — "to  be  found  missing."  It 
would  be  reported  that  he  had  suicided.  Among  peo- 
ple who  did  not  speak  English,  naturally,  no  details 
would  be  given.  It  seems  almost  unbelievable  that  in 
a  country  wrestling  with  the  whole  Asiatic  problem  the 
fact  has  to  be  set  down  that  the  government  has  no  in- 
terpreter among  the  Chinese  who  is  not  a  Chinaman, 
no  interpreter  among  the  Japanese  who  is  not  a  Jap. 
As  it  chances,  the  government  happens  to  have  two 
reliable  foreigners  as  interpreters ;  but  they  are  for- 
eigners. 

Said  Doctor  Munro,  one  of  the  medical  staff  of  the 
Immigration  Department:  "Even  in  complicated  in- 
ternational negotiations, where  each  country  is  jockey- 
ing to  protect  its  rights,  Canada  has  to  depend  on 
representatives  of  China  or  Japan  to  translate  state 
documents  and  transmit  state  messages.  Here  we  are 
on  the  verge  of  great  commercial  intercourse  with  two 
of  the  richest  countries  in  Asia,  countries  that  are  just 
awakening  from  the  century's  sleep,  countries  that 
will  need  our  flour  and  our  wheat  and  our  lumber  and 
our  machinery ;  and  we  literally  have  not  a  diplomatic 
body  in  Canada  to  speak  either  Chinese  or  Japanese. 
I'll  tell  you  what  a  lot  of  us  would  like  to  see  done — 
what  the  southern  states  are  doing  with  the  Latin- 
Spanish  of  South  America — have  a  staff  of  translators 


THE    HINDU  163 

for  our  chambers  of  commerce  and  boards  of  trade, 
or  price  files  and  lists  of  markets,  etc.  How  could  this 
be  brought  about  ?  Let  Japan  and  China  send  yearly, 
say  twenty  students  to  study  international  law  and 
English  with  us.  Let  us  send  to  China  and  Japan 
yearly  twenty  of  our  postgraduate  students  to  be 
trained  up  into  a  diplomatic  body  for  our  various 
boards  of  trade,  to  forward  international  trade  and 
help  the  two  countries  to  understand  each  other. 

"When  trouble  arose  over  Oriental  immigration  a 
few  years  ago,"  continued  Doctor  Munro,  "I  can  tell 
you  that  it  was  a  serious  matter  that  we  had  to  have 
the  translating  of  our  state  documents  done  at  that 
time  by  representatives  of  the  very  nations  we  were 
contesting." 

Unless  I  am  misinformed,  one  of  the  men  who  did 
the  translating  at  that  time  is  one  of  the  Orientals  who 
has  since  "suicided,"  and  the  reason  for  that  suicide 
you  might  as  well  try  to  fathom  as  to  follow  the  wind- 
ings of  a  ferret  in  the  dark.  Certain  royal  clans  of 
Japan  will  suicide  on  order  from  their  government  for 
the  good  of  their  country. 

"The  trouble  with  these  foolish  raids  on  Chinatown 
for  gambling,"  said  an  educated  Chinaman  in  Van- 
couver to  me,  "is  that  the  city  police  have  no  secret 
service  among  the  Chinese,  and  they  never  raid  the  re- 
sorts that  need  most  to  be  cleaned  out.  They  raid 
some  little  joint  where  the  Chinese  boys  are  playing 


164.    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

fan-tan  for  ten  cents,  when  they  do  not  raid  up-town 
gambHng  hells  where  white  men  play  for  hundreds  of 
dollars.  If  the  police  employed  Chinese  secret  service, 
they  could  clean  out  every  vice  resort  in  a  week.  Ex- 
cept in  the  segregated  district,  which  is  white,  there 
would  not  be  any  vice.  They  need  Chinese  police 
or  men  who  speak  Chinese,  and  there  would  be  no  Chi- 
nese vice  left  in  this  town." 

To  go  back  to  the  matter  of  the  poll  tax  and  the 
system  of  indentured  slavery,  the  bosses  mapped  out 
every  part  of  the  city  and  province  in  wage  areas. 
Here,  no  wages  under  twenty-five  dollars,  to  which 
green  hands  were  sent;  here,  a  better  quarter,  no 
wages  under  forty  dollars ;  and  so  on  up  as  high  as 
sixty  dollars  for  mill  work  and  camp  cooking.  About 
this  time  riots  turned  the  searchlight  on  all  matters 
Oriental;  and  the  boss  system  merged  in  straight  in- 
dustrial unionism.  You  still  go  to  a  boss  to  get  your 
gangs  of  workmen;  but  the  boss  Is  secretary  of  a 
benevolent  association;  and  if  he  takes  any  higher 
toll  than  an  employment  agent's  commission,  the 
immigration  department  has  never  been  able  to  detect 
it.  "I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying,"  declared  an 
immigration  ofiicial,  "that  for  four  years  there  has  not 
been  a  case  of  boss  slavery  that  could  be  proved  in  the 
courts.  There  has  not  been  a  case  that  could  be 
proved  in  the  courts  of  women  and  children  being 
brought  in  for  evil  purposes.    Only  merchants'  wives, 


THE    HINDU  165 

students,  and  that  class  can  come  in.  The  other  day 
an  old  fellow  tried  to  bring  a  young  woman  in.  We 
suspected  he  had  left  an  old  wife  in  China;  but  we 
could  not  prove  it;  so  we  charged  hira  five  hundred 
dollars  for  the  entrance  of  this  one  and  had  them  mar- 
ried on  the  spot.  Whenever  there  is  the  slightest  doubt 
about  their  being  married,  we  take  no  chances,  charge 
them,  five  hundred  dollars  and  have  the  knot  tied  right 
here  and  now.  Then  the  man  has  to  treat  the  woman 
as  a  wife  and  support  her ;  or  she  can  sue  him ;  and  we 
can  punish  and  deport  him.  There  is  no  more  of  little 
girls  being  brought  in  to  be  sold  for  slavery  and 
worse." 

All  the  same,  some  evils  of  the  boss  system  still 
exist.  The  boss  system  taught  the  Chinaman  organi- 
zation, and  to-day,  even  with  higher  wages,  your 
forty-five  dollars  a  month  cook  will  do  no  gardening. 
You  ask  him  why.  "They  will  cut  my  throat,"  he 
tells  you ;  and  if  he  goes  out  to  mow  the  lawn,  he  is 
soon  surrounded  by  fellow  countrymen  who  hoot  and 
jeer  him. 

"Would  they  cut  his  throat?"  I  asked  a  Chinaman. 

*'No;  but  maybe,  the  benevolent  association  or  his 
tong  fine  him." 

So  you  see  why  labor  no  longer  fears  the  Chinaman 
and  welcomes  him  to  industrial  unionism,  a  revolution 
in  the  attitude  of  labor  which  has  taken  place  in  the 
last  year.    Make  a  note  of  these  facts : 


166     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

The  poll  tax  has  trebled  expenses  for  the  house- 
holder. 

The  poll  tax  has  created  industrial  unionism  among 
the  Chinese. 

The  poll  tax  has  not  kept  the  Chinaman  out. 

How  about  the  Chinese  vices  ?  Are  they  a  stench  to 
Heaven  as  the  Hindu's?  I  can  testify  that  they  cer- 
tainly are  not  open,  and  they  certainly  are  not  ag- 
gressive, and  they  certainly  do  not  claim  vice  as  a 
right ;  for  I  went  through  Vancouver's  Chinatown  with 
only  a  Chinaman  as  an  escort  (not  through  "under- 
ground dens,"  as  one  paper  reported  it)  after  ten  at 
night;  and  the  vices  that  I  saw  were  innocent,  mild, 
pallid,  compared  to  the  white-man  vices  of  Little  Italy, 
New  York,  or  Upper  Broadway.  We  must  have  vis- 
ited in  all  a  dozen  gambling  joints,  two  or  three  mid- 
night restaurants,  half  a  dozen  opium  places  and  two 
theaters;  and  the  only  thing  that  could  be  remotely 
constructed  into  disrespect  was  the  amazement  on  one 
drunken  white  face  on  the  street  that  a  white  woman 
could  be  going  through  Chinatown  with  a  Chinaman. 
Instead  of  playing  for  ten  and  one  hundred  dollars,  as 
white  men  and  women  gamble  up-town,  the  Chinese 
boys  were  huddling  intently  over  dice  boxes,  or  play- 
ing fan-tan  with  fevered  zeal  for  ten  cents.  Instead  of 
drinking  absinthe,  one  or  two  sat  smoking  heavily, 
with  the  abstracted  stare  of  the  opium  victim.  In  the 
midnight  restaurants  some  drunken  sailors  sat  tipsily^ 


THE    HINDU  167 

eating  chop  suey.  Goldsmiths  were  plying  their  fine 
craftsmanship.  Presses  were  turning  out  dailies  with 
the  news  of  the  Chinese  revolution.  Grocery  stores, 
theaters,  markets,  all  were  open ;  for  Chinatown  never 
sleeps. 


CHAPTER  X 


WHAT   PANAMA   MEANS 


It  now  becomes  apparent  why  British  Columbia 
was  described  as  the  province  where  East  meets  West 
and  works  out  Destiny. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  Pacific  lies  Japan  come  to 
the  manhood  of  nationality,  demanding  recognition  as 
the  equal  of  the  white  race  and  room  to  expand.  Be- 
hind Japan  lies  China,  an  awakened  giant,  potent  for 
good  or  ill,  of  half  a  billion  people,  whose  commerce 
under  a  few  years  of  modern  science  and  mechanics  is 
bound  to  equal  the  commerce  of  half  Europe.  It  may 
in  a  decade  bring  to  the  ports  that  have  hitherto  been 
the  back  doors  of  America  an  aggregate  yearly  traffic 
exceeding  the  four  billion  dollars'  worth  that  yearly 
leave  Atlantic  ports  for  Europe.  Canada  is  now  the 
shortest  route  to  "Cathay" ;  the  railroads  across  Can- 
ada offer  shorter  route  from  China  to  Europe  than 
Suez  or  Horn,  by  from  two  to  ten  thousand  miles. 
Then  there  is  India,  another  awakened  giant,  potent 
for  good  or  ill,  of  three  hundred  million  people — ^two 

168 


WHAT    PANAMA   MEANS  169 

hundred  to  the  square  mile — clamoring  for  recogni- 
tion as  British  subjects,  clamoring  for  room  to 
expand. 

The  question  is  sometimes  asked  by  Americans: 
Why  does  Canada  concern  herself  about  foreign  prob- 
lems and  dangers  ?  Why  does  she  not  rest  secure  un- 
der the  asgls  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  which  forever 
forfends  foreign  conquest  of  America  by  an  alien 
power?  And  Canada  answers — ^because  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  is  not  worth  the  ink  in  which  it  was  penned 
without  the  bayonet  to  enforce  the  pen.  Belgium's 
neutrality  did  not  protect  her.  The  peace  that  is  not 
a  victory  is  only  an  armed  truce — a  let-live  by  some 
other  nation's  permission.  Without  power  to  enforce 
the  Monroe  Doctrine,  that  doctrine  is  to  Canada  but  a 
tissue-paper  rampart. 

To  add  to  the  complication  Involving  British  Co- 
lumbia comes  the  opening  of  Panama,  turning  the 
Pacific  Ocean  into  a  parade  ground  for  the  world's 
fleets  both  merchantmen  and  war.  Commercially  Pan- 
ama simply  turns  British  Columbia  into  a  front  door, 
instead  of  a  back  door.    What  does  this  mean  ? 

The  Atlantic  has  hitherto  been  the  Dominion's  front 
door,  and  the  Canadian  section  of  the  Atlantic  has 
four  harbors  of  first  rank  with  an  aggregate  popula- 
tion of  nearly  a  million.  Canada  has,  besides,  three 
lake  harbors  subsidiary  to  ocean  traffic  with  an  aggre- 
gate population  of  half  a  million.     One  may  infer 


170     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

when  the  Pacific  becomes  a  front  door,  that  Vancouver 
and  Victoria  and  Port  Mann  and  Westminster  and 
Prince  Rupert  will  soon  have  an  aggregate  population 
of  a  million. 

Behind  the  Atlantic  ports,  supplied  by  them  with 
traffic,  supplying  them  with  traffic,  is  a  provincial 
population  of  five  millions.  Behind  the  Pacific  ports  in 
British  Columbia  and  Alberta,  one  would  be  justified 
in  expecting  to  find — Strathcona  said  a  hundred 
million  people,  but  for  this  generation  put  it  at  twelve 
million. 

Through  the  Atlantic  ports  annually  come  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  thousand  or  more  immigrants,  not 
counting  the  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  from 
the  United  States.  What  if  something  happened  to 
bring  as  many  to  the  Pacific,  as  well  as  those  now 
coming  to  the  Atlantic? 

Then  a  century  of  peace  has  a  sleeping-powder 
effect  on  a  nation.  We  forget  that  the  guns  of  four 
nations  once  boomed  and  roared  round  old  Quebec  and 
down  Bay  of  Fundy  way.  If  the  Pacific  becomes  a 
front  door,  the  guns  of  the  great  nations  may  yet 
boom  there.  In  fact,  if  Canada  had  not  been  a  part 
of  Greater  Britain  four  or  five  years  ago  when  the 
trouble  arose  over  Japanese  immigration,  guns  might 
easily  have  boomed  round  Vancouver  long  before  the 
Pacific  Coast  had  become  a  front  door.  Front  door 
status  entails  bolt  and  strong  bar.    Front  door  means 


WHAT   PANAMA   MEANS  171 

navy.  Navy  means  shipbuilding  plants,  and  the  ship- 
yards of  the  United  States  on  the  Atlantic  support 
fifty  thousand  skilled  artisans,  or  what  would  make  a 
city  of  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  people. 
The  shipyards  of  England  support  a  population 
equal  to  Boston.  In  the  United  States  those  ship- 
yards exist  almost  wholly  by  virtue  of  govern- 
ment contracts  to  build  war  vessels,  and  in  Great 
Britain  largely  by  virtue  of  admiralty  subsidies. 
Though  they  also  do  an  enormous  amount  of  work  on 
river  and  coastal  steamers,  the  manager  of  the  largest 
and  oldest  plant  in  the  United  States  told  me  person- 
ally that  with  the  high  price  of  labor  and  material  in 
America,  his  shipyard  could  not  last  a  day  without 
government  contracts  for  war  vessels,  torpedoes, 
dredges,  etc.  Front  door  on  the  Pacific  means  that 
to  Canada,  and  it  means  more ;  for  Canada  belongs  to 
an  empire  that  has  vaster  dominions  to  defend  in  Asia 
than  in  Europe. 

But  isn't  all  this  stretching  one's  fancy  a  bit  too 
far  in  the  future?  How  far  is  too  far?  The  Panama 
Canal  is  open  for  trafiic,  and  there  is  not  a  harbor  of 
first  rank  in  the  United  States,  Atlantic,  Pacific,  or 
Gulf  of  Mexico,  that  does  not  bank  on,  that  is  not 
spending  millions  on,  the  expectation  of  Panama 
changing  the  Pacific  from  a  back  into  a  front  door. 
Either  these  harbors  are  all  wrong  or  Canada  is  sound 
asleep  as  a  tombstone  to  the  progress  round  her.  Bos- 


172     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

ton  has  spent  nine  million  dollars  acquiring  terminals 
and  water-front,  and  is  now  guaranteeing  the  bonds 
of  steamships  to  the  extent  of  twenty-five  million  dol- 
lars. New  York  has  built  five  new  piers  to  take  care 
of  the  commerce  coming — and  the  Federal  government 
has  spent  fifty  million  dollars  improving  the  ap- 
proaches to  her  harbor.  Baltimore  is  so  sure  that 
Panama  is  going  to  revive  shore-front  interests  that 
she  has  reclaimed  almost  two  hundred  acres  of  swamp 
land  for  manufacturing  sites,  which  she  is  leasing  out 
at  merely  nominal  figures  to  bring  the  manufacturers 
from  inland  down  to  the  sea.  In  both  Baltimore  and 
Philadelphia,  railroads  are  spending  millions  increas- 
ing their  trackage  for  the  traffic  they  expect  to  feed 
down  to  the  coast  cities  for  Panama  steamers. 

Among  the  Gulf  ports,  New  Orleans  has  spent  fif- 
teen million  dollars  putting  in  a  belt  line  system  of 
railroads  and  docks  with  steel  and  cement  sheds, 
purely  to  keep  her  harbor  front  free  of  corporate 
control.  This  is  not  out  of  enmity  to  corporations, 
but  because  the  prosperity  of  a  harbor  depends  on  all 
steamers  and  all  railroads  receiving  the  same  treat- 
ment. This  is  not  possible  under  private  and  rival 
control.  Yet  more.  New  Orleans  is  putting  on  a  line 
of  her  own  civic  steamships  to  South  America.  Up 
at  St.  Louis  and  Kansas  City,  they  are  putting  on 
civic  barge  lines  down  the  rivers  to  ocean  front. 


WHAT    PANAMA    MEANS  173 

At  Los  Angeles  twenty  million  dollars  have  been 
spent  in  making  a  harbor  out  of  a  duck  pond.  San 
Francisco  and  Oakland  have  improved  docks  to  the 
extent  of  twenty-four  million  dollars.  Seattle  attests 
her  expectation  of  what  Panama  is  going  to  do  on 
the  Pacific  by  securing  the  expenditure  of  fifteen  mil- 
lion dollars  on  her  harbor  for  her  own  traffic  and  all 
the  traffic  she  can  capture  from  Canada;  and  it  may 
be  said  here  that  the  Grand  Trunk  Pacific  of  Canada 
— a  national  road  on  which  the  Dominion  is  spending 
hundreds  of  millions — has  the  finest  docks  In  Seattle. 
Portland  has  gone  farther  than  any  of  the  Pacific 
ports.  Portland  is  Scotch — full  of  descendants  of  the 
old  Scotch  folk  who  used  to  serve  in  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Company.  If  there  is  a  chance  to  capture  world  traf- 
fic, Portland  is  out  with  both  hands  and  both  feet  after 
that  flying  opportunity.  Portland  has  not  only  im- 
proved the  entrance  to  the  Columbia  to  the  extent  of 
fifteen  million  dollars — this  was  done  by  the  Federal 
government — ^but  she  has  had  a  canal  cut  past  bad 
water  in  the  Columbia,  costing  nearly  seven  millions, 
and  has  put  on  the  big  river  a  system  of  civic  boats 
to  bring  the  wheat  down  from  an  inland  empire. 
There  is  no  aim  to  make  this  river  line  a  dividend 
payer.  The  sole  object  is  to  bring  the  Pacific  grain 
trade  to  Portland.  Portland  is  already  a  great  wheat 
port.    Will  she  get  a  share  of  Canada's  traffic  in  bond 


1745    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

to  Liverpool?  Candidly,  she  hopes  to.  How?  By 
having  Canadian  barges  bring  Alberta  wheat  down 
the  Columbia. 


n 


And  now,  what  Is  Canada  doing?  Canada  Is  doing 
absolutely  nothing.  Canada  Is  saying,  with  a  little 
note  of  belHgerency  in  her  voice — ^What's  Panama  to 
us?  Either  every  harbor  in  the  United  States  Is 
Panama  fool-mad;  either  every  harbor  In  the  United 
States  Is  spending  money  like  water  on  fool-schemes ; 
or  Canada  needs  a  wakening  blast  of  dynamite  'neath 
her  dreams.  If  Panama  brings  the  traffic  which  every 
harbor  In  the  United  States  expects,  then  Canada's 
share  of  that  traffic  will  go  through  Seattle  and  Port- 
land. Either  Canada  must  wake  up  or  miss  the  chance 
that  Is  coming. 

Two  American  transcontlnentals  have  not  come  woo- 
ing traffic  in  Vancouver  for  nothing.  The  Canadian 
Pacific  is  not  double  tracking  its  roadbed  to  the  Coast 
for  nothing.  The  Grand  Trunk  has  not  bought  ter- 
minals in  Seattle  for  nothing.  Yet,  having  jockeyed 
for  traffic  in  Vancouver,  the  two  American  roads  have 
recently  evinced  a  cooling.  They  are  playing  up 
Interests  In  Seattle  and  marking  time  In  Vancouver. 
Grand  Trunk  terminals  in  Seattle  don't  help  Van- 
couver; but  If  Canada  doesn't  want  the  traffic  from 


WHAT    PANAMA    MEANS  175 

the  world  commerce  of  the  seas,  then  Portland  and 
Seattle  do. 

One  recalls  how  a  person  feels  who  is  wakened  a  bit 
sooner  than  suits  his  slumbers.  He  passes  some  crusty 
comments  and  asks  some  criss-cross  questions.  The 
same  with  Canada  regarding  Panama.  What's  Pan- 
ama to  us?  How  in  the  world  can  a  cut  through  a 
neck  of  swamp  and  hills  three  thousand  miles  from 
the  back  of  beyond,  have  the  slightest  effect  on  com- 
merce in  Canada?  And  if  it  has,  won't  it  be  to  hurt 
our  railroads?  And  if  Panama  does  divert  traffic 
from  land  to  water,  won't  that  divert  a  share  of  ship- 
ping away  from  Montreal  and  St.  John  and  Halifax  ? 

There  is  no  use  ever  arguing  with  a  cross  ques- 
tioner. Mr.  Hill  once  said  there  was  no  use  ever  going 
into  frenzies  about  the  rights  of  the  public.  The  pub- 
lic would  just  get  exactly  what  was  coming  to  it.  If 
it  worked  for  prosperity,  it  would  get  it.  If  it  were 
not  sufficiently  alert  to  see  opportunity,  it  certainly 
would  not  be  sufficiently  alert  to  grasp  opportunity 
after  you  had  pointed  it  out.  Your  opinion  or  mine 
does  not  count  with  the  churlish  questioner.  You  have 
to  hurl  facts  back  so  hard  they  waken  your  questioner 
up.    Here  are  the  facts. 

How  can  Panama  turn  the  Pacific  Coast  into  a  front 
door  instead  of  a  back  door? 

Almost  every  big  steamship  line  of  England  and 
Germany,  also  a  great  many  of  the  small  lines  from 


176     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

Norway  and  Belgium  and  Holland  and  Spain  and 
Italy,  have  announced  their  intention  of  putting  on 
ships  to  go  by  way  of  Panama  to  the  Orient  and  to 
Pacific  Coast  ports.  Three  of  those  lines  have  ex- 
plicitly said  that  they  would  call  at  Pacific  ports  in 
Canada  if  there  were  traffic  and  terminals  for  them. 

The  steamers  coming  from  the  IMediterranean  have 
announced  their  intention  of  charging  for  steerage 
only  five  to  ten  dollars  more  to  the  Pacific  Coast  ports 
than  to  the  Atlantic  ports.  It  costs  the  immigrant 
from  sixteen  to  twenty-five  dollars  to  go  west  from 
Atlantic  ports.  It  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  a  great 
many  immigrants  will  save  fare  by  booking  directly 
to  Pacific  ports.  Of  South-of-Europe  immigrants, 
almost  seven  hundred  thousand  a  year  come  to  United 
States  Atlantic  ports,  of  whom  two-thirds  remain, 
one-third,  owing  to  the  rigor  of  winter,  going  back. 
Of  those  who  will  come  to  Pacific  ports,  they  will  not 
be  driven  back  by  the  rigor  of  winter.  They  will  find 
a  region  almost  similar  in  climate  to  their  own  land 
and  very  similar  in  agriculture.  Hitherto  Canada 
has  not  made  a  bid  for  South-of-Europe  immigrants, 
but,  with  Panama  open,  they  will  come  whether  Canada 
bids  for  them  or  not.  They  are  the  quickest,  cheapest 
and  most  competent  fruit  farmers  in  the  world.  They 
are  also  the  most  turbulent  of  all  European  immi- 
grants.   We  may  like  or  dislike  them.    They  are  com- 


WHAT    PANAMA    MEANS  177 

ing  to  Canada's  shores  when  the  war  is  over,  coming 
in  Itaderless  hordes. 

Th°  East  has  awakened  and  is  moving  west.  The 
West  lias  always  been  awake  and  is  moving  east.  The 
East  is  sending  her  teas  and  her  silks  to  the  West, 
and  the  West  is  sending  her  wheat  and  her  lumber  to 
the  East.  When  these  two  currents  meet,  what.''  If  two 
currents  meet  and  do  not  blend,  what  ?  Exactly  what 
has  happened  before  in  the  world,  impact,  collision, 
struggle;  and  the  fittest  survives.  This  was  the  real 
reason  for  the  building  of  the  Panama  Canal — ^to  give 
the  American  navy  command  of  her  own  shores  on  the 
Pacific.  Now  that  Panama  is  built  it  means  the  war 
fleets  of  the  whole  world  on  the  Pacific.  Canada  can 
no  more  grow  into  a  strong  nation  and  keep  out  of  the 
world  conclave  assembling  on  the  Pacific  than  a  boy 
can  grow  into  strong  manhood  and  keep  out  of  the 
rough  and  tumble  of  life,  or  a  girl  grow  to  efficient 
womanhood  and  play  the  hothouse  parasite  all  her  life. 
Fleets,  naval  stations,  coaling  stations,  dry  docks, 
whole  cities  supported  by  shipyards  are  bound  to 
grow  on  the  Pacific  just  as  surely  as  the  years  come 
and  go.  The  growth  has  begun  already.  Nothing 
worth  having  can  be  left  undefended  and  be  kept. 
Poor  old  China  tried  that.  So  did  Korea.  We  may 
talk  ourselves  black  in  the  face  over  peace  and  pass 
up  enough  platitudes  to  pave  the  way  to  a  universal 


178     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

brotherhood  of  heaven  on  earth,  but  in  the  past  good 
intentions  and  platitudes  have  paved  the  way  tc  an 
altogether  different  sort  of  place.  In  the  whole  world 
history  of  the  past  (however  much  we  might  wish  this 
earth  a  different  place)  the  nation  most  secure  against 
war  has  been  the  nation  most  prepared  against  war. 
Canada  can't  dodge  that  fact.  With  Panama  open 
come  the  armaments  of  the  world  to  the  Pacific ! 

How  about  a  merchant  marine  for  Canada?  This 
question  was  important  to  the  maritime  provinces, 
but  the  maritime  provinces  are  well  served  by  British 
liners.  On  the  Pacific  seventy-two  per  cent,  of  the 
carrying  trade  is  already  controlled  by  Japan.  Now 
Canada  can  buy  her  ships  in  the  cheapest  market, 
Norway  or  England. 

She  can  herself  build  ships  as  cheaply  as  any  coun- 
try in  the  world.  She  can  operate  her  ships  as  cheaply 
as  any  country  in  the  world. 

She  has  no  restrictions  as  to  the  manning  of  her 
crews  and,  as  far  as  I  know,  has  never  had  a  case  of 
abuse  arising  from  this  freedom  which  her  laws  per- 
mit. 

Except  for  the  St.  Lawrence  after  October,  there 
is  no  foreign  discrimination  in  the  insurance  of  her 
ships. 

Canada  can  go  into  the  race  for  world-carrying 
trade  unhampered. 

She  has  yet  another  advantage.    With  only  two  or 


WHAT   PANAMA   MEANS  179 

three  exceptions — a  fishing  bounty,  one  or  two  mail 
contracts — the  United  States  has  not  given  and  may 
never  give  government  aid  to  ships.  The  Canadian 
government  does  and  does  wisely !  Ocean  traffic  may 
be  as  requisite  to  prosperity  as  rail  traffic,  and  you 
can't  give  land  subsidies  to  the  sea. 


in 


It  is  when  one  comes  to  consider  Panama's  influence 
on  rail  traffic  that  it  becomes  apparent  the  Canal  may 
divert  half  the  Dominion's  traffic  to  seaboard  by  Pa- 
cific routes.  Why  do  you  suppose  that  the  big  grain 
companies  of  the  Northwest  want  to  reverse  their  for- 
mer policy  ?  Formerly  the  biggest  elevators  were  built 
east,  the  medium-sized  at  the  big  gathering  centers, 
the  smaller  scattered  out  along  the  line  anywhere  con- 
venient to  the  grower.  To-day,  as  far  as  Alberta  is 
concerned,  the  biggest  elevators  are  going  up  far- 
thest west.  Why?  Why  do  you  suppose  that  the  big 
traction  companies  of  Birmingham,  Alabama,  the  big 
wire  companies  of  Cleveland  and  Pittsburgh  are  look- 
ing over  the  Canadian  West  for  sites  ?  One  Birming- 
ham firm  has  just  bought  the  site  for  a  big  plant  in 
Calgary.  Why  do  you  suppose  that  the  Canadian 
Pacific  Railway  is  building  big  repair  shops  at 
Coquitlam,  and  the  Canada  Northern  at  Port 
Mann.''      Why  are   both   these    roads    also    station- 


180     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

ing  big  repair  plants  at  inland  points,  one 
at  Calgary,  the  other  supposed  to  be  for 
Kamloops?  It  is  not  to  help  along  the  townsite  lot 
booms  in  these  places.  No  one  deprecates  these  town 
lots  running  out  the  area  of  Chicago  more  than  the 
railroads  do.  "Wild  oats"  hurt  trade  more  than  they 
advertise  the  legitimate  opportunities  of  a  new  coun- 
try. 

Take  a  look  at  them ! 

From  Fort  William  to  Alberta  is  one  thousand  two 
hundred  miles,  to  Calgary  one  thousand  two  hundred 
eighty,  to  Edmonton  one  thousand  four  hundred  fifty- 
one  miles.  From  Alberta  to  Vancouver  is  slightly  over 
six  hundred  miles.  Fort  William  navigation  is  open 
only  half  the  year.  The  Pacific  harbors  are  open  all 
the  year.  Manitoba  and  Saskatchewan  wheat  may  be 
rushed  forward  in  time  for  shipment  before  the  close 
of  navigation.  Because  Alberta  is  farther  west  and 
must  wait  longest  for  cars,  very  little  of  her  wheat  can 
be  rushed  forward  in  time ;  so  Alberta  wheat  must  go 
on  down  to  St.  John,  another  one  thousand  two  hun- 
dred miles.  Look  at  the  figures — six  hundred  and 
fifty  miles  from  Alberta  to  the  seaboard  at  Vancouver, 
two  thousand  four  hundred  miles  from  Alberta  to  sea- 
board at  St.  John!  In  other  words,  while  a  car  is 
making  one  trip  to  St.  John  and  back  with  wheat,  it 
could  make  four  trips  to  Vancouver. 

One  year  the  crop  so  far  exceeded  the  rolling  stock 


WHAT    PANAMA    MEANS  181 

of  all  the  railroads  in  America  that  millions  of  dollars 
were  lost  in  depreciation  and  waste  waiting  for  ship- 
ment. This  state  of  affairs  does  not  apply  to  wheat 
alone  nor  to  Canada  alone.  It  was  the  condition  with 
every  crop  in  every  section  of  America.  I  saw  twenty- 
nine  miles  of  cotton  standing  along  the  tracks  of  a 
southern  port  exposed  to  wet  weather  because  the 
southern  railroads  had  neither  steamers  nor  cars  to 
rush  shipments  forward  for  Liverpool.  In  New  York 
State  and  the  belt  of  middle  west  states  thousands 
of  barrels  of  fruit  lay  and  rotted  on  the  ground  be- 
cause the  railroads  could  not  handle  it.  In  an  orchard 
near  my  own  I  saw  two  thousand  barrels  lie  and  go 
to  waste  because  there  were  no  shipping  facihties 
cheap  enough  to  make  it  worth  while  to  send  the  apples 
to  market.  Hill  has  said  that  if  all  the  fruit  orchards 
set  out  in  western  states  come  to  maturity,  it  will 
require  twenty  times  the  rolling  stock  that  exists  to- 
day to  ship  the  fruit  out  in  time  to  reach  the  market 
in  a  salable  condition.  The  same  of  wheat,  especially 
in  the  West,  where  wheat  is  raised  in  quantities  too 
great  for  any  individual  granary.  A  few  years  ago, 
when  the  northwestern  states  had  their  banner  crop, 
piles  of  wheat  the  size  of  a  miniature  town  lay  exposed 
to  weather  for  weeks  on  Washington  and  Idaho  and 
Montana  railroads  because  the  railroads  had  not  suf- 
ficient cars  to  haul  it  away. 

The  same  thing  almost  happened  in  Canada  one 


182     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

fall,  though  conditions  were  aggravated  by  the  coal 
strike. 

Now,  then,  where  does  Panama  come  into  this  story  ? 
What  if  the  railroads  did  not  carry  the  crop  two  thou" 
sand  four  hundred  miles  to  seaboard  in  order  to  ship 
forward  to  Liverpool?  What  if  they  carried  some 
of  the  big  crops  only  six  hundred  miles  west  to  sea- 
board on  the  Pacific?  They  would  have  four  times  as 
many  cars  available  to  handle  the  crop,  or  they  could 
make  just  four  times  as  many  trips  to  Vancouver  with 
the  same  cars  as  to  the  Atlantic  seaboard  after  the 
close  of  navigation  in  the  East.  It  is  apparent  now 
why  the  Pacific  ports  have  gone  mad  over  the  possi- 
bilities from  Panama  and  are  preparing  for  enormous 
traffic.  Of  course  there  are  features  of  this  diversion 
of  traffic  to  new  channels  which  the  lay  mind  will  miss 
and  only  the  traffic  specialist  appreciate.  For  instance, 
there  is  the  question  of  grade  over  the  mountains. 
The  Canadian  Pacific  Railroad  meets  this  difficulty 
with  its  long  tunnel  through  Mount  Stephen. 
The  Grand  Trunk  declares  that  it  has  the  lowest  moun- 
tain grade  of  all  the  transcontinental.  The  Great 
Northern  uses  electric  power  for  its  tunnels,  and  Los 
Angeles  will  tell  you  how  its  new  diagonal  San  Pedro 
road  up  through  Nevada  puts  it  in  touch  with  the 
inland  empire  of  the  mountain  states  by  running  up 
parallel  with  the  mountains  and  not  crossing  a  divide 
at  all. 


WHAT  PANAMA  MEANS     183 
IV 

Take  a  look  at  the  subject  from  another  angle !  At 
the  present  rate  of  homesteading  in  the  West,  within 
twenty  years  the  three  prairie  provinces  will  be  pro- 
ducing seven  to  nine  hundred  million  bushels  of  wheat 
a  year.  Possibly  they  will  not  do  so  well  as  that,  but 
suppose  they  do ;  the  three  grain  provinces  of  Canada 
will  be  producing  as  much  as  the  wheat  produced  in  all 
the  United  States.  Now,  the  United  States  to  take 
care  of  its  crop  has  practically  seven  transcontinentals 
and  a  host  of  allied  trunk  lines  like  the  Illinois  Central, 
the  New  York  Central  and  the  Pennsylvania ;  but  when 
a  big  crop  comes,  the  United  States  roads  are  par- 
alyzed from  a  shortage  of  cars.  Canada  has  only 
three  big  transcontinentals  and  no  big  trunk  lines  to 
take  care  of  a  crop  that  may  be  as  large  as  the  whole 
United  States  crop.  Panama  promises,  not  a  menace, 
but  the  one  possible  avenue  of  relief  to  the  railroads. 

Of  course  eastern  cities  may  fight  a  diversion  of 
traffic  to  the  seaboard  of  the  West,  but  they  can  not 
stop  it.  Portland  is  already  one  of  the  big  grain 
shippers  and  will  bid  for  a  share  of  Canada's  west- 
bound grain,  if  Vancouver  and  Prince  Rupert  do  not 
prepare  for  the  new  conditions. 

Not  only  terminals  but  elevators  must  be  prepared 
on  the  Pacific.  Terminals  mean  more  than  railroad 
company  tracks.    They  mean  city-owned  trackage,  so 


184.     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

that  the  tramp  steamer  seeking  cargo  at  cheap  rates 
shall  have  every  inducement  and  facility  for  getting 
cargo.  They  mean  free  sites  for  manufacturers,  not 
sky-rocket  boom  prices  that  keep  new  industries  out  of 
a  city.  Elevators  and  terminals  have  been  announced 
time  and  again  for  Vancouver,  but  up  to  the  present 
the  announcements  have  not  materialized.  Regular 
grain  steamers  must  be  put  on,  steamers  good  for 
cargo  of  three  hundred  thousand  and  four  hundred 
thousand  bushels,  as  on  the  lakes,  and  with  devices  for 
such  swift  handling  as  have  made  Montreal  one  of  the 
best  grain  ports  in  the  world,  in  spite  of  high  insur- 
ance rates  and  half-season.  As  long  as  there  are  no 
elevators  at  Vancouver,  grain  must  be  sacked.  Sack- 
ing costs  from  five  to  six  cents  extra  a  bushel,  and 
more  extra  in  handling.  The  remedy  for  this  Is  for 
the  Pacific  ports  to  build  elevators;  and  even  when 
they  haven't  elevators,  the  saving  in  rates  over  and 
above  the  extra  sacking  has  already  been  from  eight 
to  fourteen  cents  a  bushel  on  grain  billed  for  Liverpool 
via  the  one  hundred  ninety  miles  of  rail  over  Tehuante- 
pec,  or  via  the  Panama  railroad,  where  bulk  need  not 
be  broken  twice. 

An  objection  is  that  in  the  humid  Pacific  Coast  win- 
ter climate  there  is  danger  of  grain  heating.  This  has 
been  overcome  at  Portland,  and  against  this  must  be 
set  the  incalculable  advantage  that  Pacific  Coast  ports 


WHAT   PANAMA   MEANS  185 

are  open  all  the  year  round.  One  year,  of  65,000,000 
bushels  of  grain  from  the  prairie  provinces  that 
passed  over  the  Great  Lakes  forty-three  per  cent,  went 
out  by  way  of  Buffalo  to  American  ports.  Why? 
Because  the  glut  was  so  great,  the  facilities  so  inade- 
quate for  the  enormous  crop,  the  insurance  so  high, 
that  the  grain  could  not  be  rushed  seaward  fast 
enough  before  close  of  navigation.  Through  Vancou- 
ver during  this  very  period  there  passed  only  750,000 
bushels  of  wheat.     Why  not  more?     No  facilities. 

"We  could  have  shipped  millions  of  bushels  of 
wheat  to  Liverpool  by  way  of  Vancouver,"  said  the 
head  of  one  of  the  largest  grain  companies  in  Calgary, 
"but  there  were  simply  no  facilities  to  take  care  of  it. 
On  16,000  bushels,  which  we  shipped  by  way  of  Van- 
couver and  Tehuantepec,  we  saved  eight  cents  a 
bushel,  as  against  Atlantic  rates.  You  know  how 
much  handling  the  Tehuantepec  route  requires.  Well, 
you  can  figure  what  we  should  save  the  farmer  when 
Panama  opens  and  the  cargo  never  breaks  bulk  to 
Liverpool  from  our  shore." 

Rates,  not  heating  nor  sacking,  are  the  real  cloud  in 
the  Canadian  mind  regarding  Panama ;  and  if  Canada 
continues  to  stand  twiddling  her  hands  over  rates  when 
she  should  be  hustling  preparations,  the  inevitable  will 
happen — Portland,  which  sends  millions  of  bushels  of 
her  own  wheat  to  Liverpool,  is  ready  to  take  care  of 


186    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

Canada's  traffic ;  so  is  Seattle.  There  is  nothing  these 
cities  hope  more  than  that  Canada  will  continue  to 
shun  the  question  of  rates. 


Let  us  look  at  this  question  of  rates ! 

Ordinarily  the  rate  on  wheat  from  Chicago  to  New 
York  is  about  ten  to  twelve  cents  a  bushel ;  from  New 
York  to  Liverpool  about  three  to  seven  cents.  That  is, 
for  one  thousand  miles  (roughly)  the  rate  by  rail  is 
ten  cents.  For  three  thousand  miles  the  rate  by  water 
is  three  cents.  That  is,  one  cent  buys  the  shipper  one 
hundred  miles  by  rail.  One  cent  buys  him  one  thou- 
sand miles  by  water.  Get  out  a  chart  and  figure  out 
for  yourself  what  the  saving  means  on  wheat  via  Pan- 
ama to  Liverpool  on  a  crop — we'll  say — of  one  hun- 
dred million  bushels.  Alberta's  future  share  alone, 
leaving  Saskatchewan  and  Manitoba  crops  to  continue 
going  to  Liverpool  by  Fort  William  and  Montreal. 
You  can  figure  the  distance  to  Liverpool  via  Panama 
twice  or  even  three  times  as  far  as  via  Atlantic  ports, 
long  as  water  rates  are  to  rail,  as  one  to  ten,  the  saving 
on  a  one-hundred-milllon-bushel  crop  for  a  single  year 
is  enough  to  buy  terminals,  build  elevators  and  run 
civic  ships  as  Boston  and  New  Orleans  and  St.  Louis 
and  Kansas  City  and  Portland  are  doing.  Via  Te- 
huantepec  the  saving  was  eight  cents  a  bushel.     At 


WHAT   PANAMA   MEANS  187 

that  rate  your  saving  in  a  year  would  be  eight  million 
dollars  for  Alberta  wheat  alone,  not  counting  dairy 
products,  which  are  bound  to  become  larger  each  year, 
and  coal,  which  will  yet  bring  the  same  wealth  to  Al- 
berta as  to  Pennsylvania,  and  lumber,  on  which  the 
saving  is  as  one  to  four. 

Please  note  one  point !  It  is  a  point  usually  ignored 
in  all  comparisons  of  water  and  rail  rates.  While  sea 
and  lake  are  the  cheapest  method  of  transportation  in 
the  world,  canals  (unless  some  other  nation  builds 
them  as  the  United  States  built  Panama)  are  not  so 
cheap  as  sea  and  lake.  When  you  add  to  the  cost  of 
canals,  the  interest  on  cost,  the  maintenance,  and 
charge  that  up  against  traffic — for  it  doesn't  matter, 
though  the  government  does  maintain  canals ;  you  pay 
the  bill  in  the  end — canal  rates  come  higher  than  rail 
rates.  But  in  Canada's  use  of  Panama,  Canada  is 
not  paying  for  the  building  of  the  canal;  and  the 
Lord  pays  the  upkeep  of  the  canal  of  the  sea. 

Take  this  question  of  Vancouver  rates,  from  which 
Canada  is  standing  back  so  inertly !  Take  the  latest 
rates  issued !  These  are  subject  to  change  and  correc- 
tion, but  that  does  not  affect  final  conclusions.  It 
costs  Manitoba  and  Saskatchewan  from  twelve  to 
nineteen  cents  a  hundred  weight  to  send  grain  to  Fort 
William,  then  during  open  navigation  from  four  to 
five  cents  to  reach  seaboard  at  Montreal.  It  costs  Al- 
berta, being  farther  west,  twenty-five  cents  to  reach 


188    THE   CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

Fort  William ;  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  her  wheat  can 
seldom  reach  Fort  William  before  the  close  of  naviga- 
tion; so  she  must  pay  twenty-five  cents  more  to  send 
her  wheat  on  down  to  St.  John,  and  five  to  six  cents 
from  St.  John  to  Liverpool,  or  in  all  fifty-five  cents. 
The  Alberta  rate  is  twenty-two  cents  plus  a  fraction 
to  Vancouver,  or  forty-five  cents  to  Liverpool.  Now, 
Alberta  wants  to  know:  Why  is  she  charged  twenty- 
two  and  a  fraction  cents  for  six  hundred  fifty  miles 
west,  and  only  twenty-five  cents  for  one  thousand  two 
hundred  miles  east.'' 

There  is  the  nub  and  the  rub  and  the  hub  of  the 
whole  thing,  and  the  discrimination  bears  just  as 
vitally  on  fruit  and  dairy  products  and  lumber  and 
coal  as  on  wheat.  It  is  a  question  that  has  to  be  set- 
tled in  Canada  within  the  next  few  years,  or  her  west- 
bound traffic  will  build  up  Portland  and  Seattle  in- 
stead of  Vancouver  and  Prince  Rupert. 

The  whole  problem  of  the  effect  of  Panama  is  so 
new  in  Canada  that  data  do  not  exist  to  make  compari- 
sons; but  details  have  been  carefully  gathered  by 
American  ports,  and  the  cases  are  a  close  enough  par- 
allel to  illustrate  what  Panama  means  in  the  world  of 
traffic  to-day.  Freight  on  a  car  of  Washington  lum- 
ber to  New  York  is  from  three  hundred  ninety-five  to 
four  hundred  eleven  dollars ;  by  water,  the  freight  is 
from  one  hundred  to  one  hundred  and  seventy-five  dol- 
lars.    To  bring  a  car  of  Washington  fir  diagonally^ 


WHAT   PANAMA    MEANS  189 

across  the  continent  to  Norfolk  costs  eighty-five  cents  a 
hundred  weight.  To  bring  it  round  by  Panama  costs 
twenty  cents,  or  to  ship  the  very  same  cargo  from  Nor- 
folk to  England — which  many  southern  dealers  are 
now  doing — costs  twelve  to  fifteen  cents,  including  the 
handling  at  both  ends.  Dry  goods  from  New  York 
to  Texas  by  water  cost  eighty-nine  cents ;  by  rail,  one 
dollar  and  eighty-two  cents.  Oranges  by  rail  from 
the  Pacific  to  the  Atlantic  cost  twenty-three  dollars  a 
ton ;  by  water  before  the  canal  opened,  breaking  bulk 
twice,  ten  dollars,  and  through  the  canal,  when  bulk  is 
not  broken,  will  cost  only  five  to  eight  dollars.  On 
oranges  alone  California  will  save  twenty  million  dol- 
lars a  year  shipping  via  Panama.  The  Balfour-Guth- 
rie firm  of  Antwerp  can  ship  a  ton  of  groceries  from 
Europe  to  Los  Angeles  round  the  Horn  for  the  same 
amount  the  Southern  Pacific  ships  that  ton  from  Los 
Angeles  to  San  Francisco — namely,  six  dollars  plus. 
The  rail  rate  on  salt  in  Washington  is  eight  dollars 
seventy  cents  for  eighty-eight  miles ;  the  river  rate  one 
dollar  fifty  cents.  I  could  give  instances  in  the  South 
where  cotton  by  rail  costs  two  dollars  a  bale ;  by  water, 
twenty-five  cents. 

If  Panama  works  this  great  reduction,  this  revolu- 
tion, in  freights,  will  that  not  hurt  the  railroads?  Ask 
the  railroads  whether  they  make  their  profit  on  the 
long  or  the  short  haul.  Ask  them  whether  high  rates 
and  sparse  population  or  dense  population  and  low 


190     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

rates  pay  the  better  dividends!  Compare  New  York 
Central  traffic  receipts  and  Southern  Pacific  on  the 
average  per  mile !  Now  ships  that  are  to  use  Panama 
plan  pouring  twenty  million  people  into  the  Pacific 
Coast  in  twenty  years. 

Will  Canada  share  the  coming  tide  of  benefits  ?  Only^ 
two  things  can  prevent  her :  first,  lack  of  preparation — 
too  much  "hot  air"  and  not  enough  hustle;  too  much 
after-dinner  aviating  in  the  empyrean  and  not  enough 
muddy  mess  out  on  the  harbor  dredge  with  "sand 
hogs"  and  "shovel  stiffs" ;  then,  second,  lack  of  ade- 
quate labor  to  prepare.  After-dinner  speeches  don't 
make  the  dirt  fly.  Canada  wants  fewer  platitudes  and 
a  great  deal  more  of  good  old-fashioned  hard  hoeing. 


CHAPTER  XI 


TO  EUROPE  BY  HUDSON  BAY 


It  must  have  become  apparent  to  the  most  casual 
observer  that  transportation  has  been  to  Canada  more 
than  a  system  of  exploitation  by  capital.  Transpor- 
tation has  been  to  Canada  an  integral  part  of  her  very 
national  life — which,  perhaps,  explains  how  with  the 
exception  of  extravagance  incident  to  a  period  of 
great  prosperity  her  railroad  systems  have  been 
founded  on  sound  finance  from  bed-rock  up.  In  spite 
of  huge  land  grants — in  all  fifty-five  million  acres — 
and  in  the  case  of  one  railroad  wild  stock  fluctuations 
from  forty-eight  to  three  hundred  dollars — it  is  a 
question  if  a  dollar  of  public  money  has  ever  been  di- 
verted from  roadbed  to  promoters'  pockets.  Certainly, 
in  the  case  of  the  strongest  road  financially  in  Canada, 
no  director  of  the  road  has  ever  juggled  with  under- 
ground wires  to  unload  worthless  securities  on  widows 
and  orphans.  Railroad  stocks  have  never  been  made 
the  football  of  speculators.  Charters  in  the  old  days 
were  juggled  through  legislatures  with  land  grants 

191 


19^    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

of  eight  and  twelve  thousand  acres  per  mile;  but  at 
that  time  these  acres  were  worthless;  and  the  system 
of  land  grants  has  for  the  last  ten  years  been  discon- 
tinued. Because  railroads  are  a  necessary  part  of 
Canada's  national  development,  state  aid  of  late  has 
taken  the  form  of  loans,  cash  grants  and  guarantee 
of  bonds  by  provincial  and  federal  governments.  This 
has  given  Canada's  Railway  Commission  a  whip 
handle  over  rates  and  management,  which  perhaps 
explains  why  railroads  in  Canada  have  never  been  re- 
garded as  lawful  game  by  the  financial  powers  that 
prey.  Including  municipal,  provincial  and  federal 
grants,  stocks  and  bonds,  Canada  has  spent  on  her 
railroads  a  billion  and  a  half.  Including  capital  cost 
and  maintenance,  Canada  has  spent  on  her  canals 
$138,000,000.  On  steamship  subsidies,  Canada's 
yearly  grants  have  gradually  risen  from  a  few  hun- 
dred thousands  to  as  high  as  two  millions  in  some 
years.  Nor  does  this  cover  all  the  national  expendi- 
ture on  transportation;  for  besides  the  thirty-eight 
millions  spent  on  dredging  and  improving  navigation 
on  the  St.  Lawrence,  twelve  millions  have  been  appro- 
priated for  improving  Halifax  Harbor;  and  only  re- 
cently federal  guarantee  for  bonds  to  the  extent  of 
forty-three  millions  was  accorded  one  transcontinental. 
This  road  was  so  heavily  guaranteed  by  provincial 
governments  that  if  it  had  failed  it  would  have  in- 
volved four  western  provinces.    Its  plight  arose  from 


TO   EUROPE    BY   HUDSON    BAY     193 

two  causes — the  extravagant  cost  of  labor  and  mate- 
rial in  an  inflated  era,  and  the  depression  in  the  world 
money  markets  curtailing  all  extension.  Workmen  on 
this  road  were  paid  three  to  seventeen  dollars  a  day, 
who  would  have  received  a  dollar  and  a  half  to  four 
dollars  ten  years  ago.  In  fact,  the  owners  of  the  road 
themselves  received  those  wages  thirty  years  ago.  Sec- 
tions cost  one  hundred  thousand  dollars  a  mile  which 
would  formerly  have  been  built  for  thirty  thousand; 
and  prairie  grading  formerly  estimated  at  six  to  eight 
thousand  dollars  a  mile  jumped  to  twenty  and  thirty 
thousand  dollars.  In  coming  to  the  aid  of  the  Canada 
Northern,  the  government  did  no  more  than  Sir  John 
Macdonald's  government  did  for  the  Canadian  Pacific 
Railroad  in  1885,  and  the  prosperity  of  the  Canadian 
Pacific  Railroad  has  amply  justified  that  aid. 

Canada's  transportation  system  has  been  a  national 
policy  from  the  first.  Her  first  transcontinental  she 
built  to  unify  and  bind  confederation.  Her  second 
two  transcontinentals  she  launched  to  carry  commerce 
east  and  west,  because  the  United  States  had  built  a 
tariff  wall  which  prevented  Canada  moving  her  com- 
merce north  and  south.  Her  canal  system  to  cut  the 
distance  from  the  Great  Lakes  to  the  seaboard  and 
to  overcome  the  rapids  at  "the  Soo,"  at  Niagara  and 
on  the  St.  Lawrence — has  simply  resolved  Itself  into 
an  effort  to  move  seaboard  inland,  on  the  principle 
that  the  farther  inland  the  port  the  shorter  the  land 


194*    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

haul  and  the  lower  the  traffic  toll.  Owing  to  the 
enormous  increase  in  the  cargo  capacity  of  lake 
freighters  in  recent  years,  grain  ships  reach  Buffalo 
carrying  three  hundred  thousand  bushels  of  western 
wheat,  and  Canada's  Welland  Canal  has  worked  at  a 
handicap.  Until  the  Canal  is  widened,  the  big  cargo 
carriers  can  not  pass  through  it,  and  the  necessity  to 
break  bulk  here  is  one  explanation  of  more  than  half 
Canada's  western  traffic  going  to  seaboard  by  way  of 
Buffalo  instead  of  Montreal. 

For  years  the  proposal  has  been  under  considera- 
tion to  connect  the  Great  Lakes  with  the  St.  Lawrence 
by  way  of  a  canal  from  Georgian  Bay  through  Ot- 
tawa River.  This  would  be  a  colossal  undertaking; 
for  the  region  up  Mattawa  River  toward  Georgian 
Bay  is  of  iron  rock,  and  to  build  a  canal  wide  enough 
for  the  big  cargo  carriers  would  out-distance  any- 
thing in  the  way  of  canal  construction  in  the  world. 
Both  parties  in  Canada  have  endorsed  what  is  known 
as  the  Georgian  Bay  Ship  Canal ;  and  estimates  place 
the  cost  at  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  millions;  but 
traffic  men  of  the  Lakes  declare  if  the  big  cargo  car- 
riers are  to  have  cheap  insurance  on  this  route,  the 
canal  will  have  to  be  wide  enough  to  guarantee  safe 
passage ;  and  the  cost  would  be  twice  this  estimate. 

On  no  section  of  her  national  transportation  has 
Canada  expended  more  thought  and  effort  than  im- 
proving navigation  on  the  St.  Lawrence.     This,  In 


TO   EUROPE   BY   HUDSON    BAY     195 

its  way,  has  been  as  difficult  a  problem  for  a  people  of 
seven  millions  as  the  construction  of  Panama  for  a 
people  of  ninety  millions.  Consider  the  geographical 
position  of  the  St.  Lawrence  route !  It  penetrates  the 
continent  from  eight  hundred  to  nine  hundred  sixty 
miles.  Montreal,  the  head  of  navigation  on  the  St. 
Lawrence,  is  the  farthest  inland  harbor  of  America 
with  the  exception  of  two  ports — Galveston  on  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico  and  Port  Nelson  on  Hudson  Bay. 
Galveston  is  seven  hundred  miles  from  the  wheat  fields 
of  Kansas.  Port  Nelson  is  four  hundred  miles  from 
the  wheat  fields  of  Manitoba.  Montreal  is — roughly 
— a  thousand  miles  from  the  head  of  the  Lakes,  one 
thousand  five  hundred  miles  from  the  wheat  fields  of 
Manitoba,  two  thousand  two  hundred  miles  from  the 
wheat  fields  of  Alberta.  Montreal's  great  advantage 
is  in  being  situated  so  far  inland.  Her  disadvantages 
are  from  the  nature  of  the  St.  Lawrence.  First,  the 
port  is  closed  by  ice  from  November  to  April.  Sec- 
ond, the  St.  Lawrence  is  the  drainage  bed  of  inland 
oceans — the  Great  Lakes.  Third,  it  passes  into  the 
Atlantic  at  one  of  the  most  difficult  sections  of  the 
coast.  South  of  Newfoundland  are  the  fogs  of  the 
Grand  Banks.  North  of  Newfoundland  the  tidal  cur- 
rent beats  upon  an  iron  coast  in  storm  and  fog.  To 
save  detour,  St.  Lawrence  vessels,  of  course,  follow 
the  route  north  of  Newfoundland  through  the  Straits 
of  Belle  Isle. 


196    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

When  Canada  began  dredging  the  St.  Lawrence  in 
1850,  the  channel  averaged  a  depth  of  ten  feet.  By 
1888,  the  channel  averaged  twenty-seven  and  one-half 
feet  at  low  water.  To-day  a  depth  of  thirty  to  thirty- 
one  feet  has  been  attained.  At  its  narrowest  points 
the  St.  Lawrence  has  a  steamship  channel  four  hun- 
dred and  fifty  feet  wide  and  thirty  feet  deep  from  side 
to  side.  In  the  days  when  high  insurance  rates  were 
established  against  the  St.  Lawrence  route,  there  was 
practically  not  a  lighthouse  nor  channel  buoy  from 
Tadousac  to  the  Straits  of  Belle  Isle.  To-day  between 
Montreal  and  Quebec  are  ninety-nine  lighted  buoys, 
one  hundred  and  ninety-five  can  buoys ;  between  Que- 
bec and  the  Straits,  three  light  ships,  eighty  gas 
buoys,  one  whistling  buoy,  seventy-five  can  buoys, 
four  submarine  bell  ships,  and  a  line  of  lighthouses. 
Telegraph  lines  extend  to  the  outer  side  of  Belle  Isle, 
and  hydrographic  survey  has  charted  every  foot  of 
the  river.  In  spite  of  these  improvements,  insurance 
rates  are  four  to  six  per  cent,  for  lines  to  Canada, 
where  they  are  one  and  one-half  to  two  and  one-half 
to  American  ports. 


H 


What  with  three  transcontinentals,  a  complete 
canal  system  from  seaboard  to  the  Great  Lakes  and 
an  outlet  for  western  traffic  through  Panama,  one 


TO   EUROPE    BY   HUDSON    BAY     197 

would  think  that  Canada  had  made  ample  provision 
for  transportation;  but  she  has  only  begun.  If  she 
is  to  be  the  shortest  route  to  the  Orient,  she  must  keep 
traffic  in  Canadian  channels  and  not  divide  it  with 
Panama  and  Suez.  If  she  is  to  feed  the  British  Em- 
pire, she  must  establish  the  shortest  route  from  her 
wheat  fields  to  the  United  Kingdom ;  and  if  she  is  to 
overcome  the  disadvantage  of  harbors  open  only  half 
the  year,  she  must  secure  to  herself  some  other  ad- 
vantage— such  as  access  to  the  harbor  having  the 
shortest  land  haul  and  therefore  the  lowest  freight 
rates  in  America.  There  is  another  consideration. 
If  when  Canada  is  raising  less  than  three  hundred 
million  bushels  of  wheat  her  transcontinentals  are 
glutted  with  traffic  and  her  harbors  gorged,  what  will 
happen  when  her  wheat  fields  raise  eight  hundred 
million  bushels  of  wheat?  So  Canada  has  cast  about 
for  a  shorter  route  to  Europe  by  Hudson  Bay,  and 
both  parties  in  Dominion  politics  have  backed  the 
project. 

At  a  time  when  the  food  supply  of  Great  Britain 
must  be  drawn  almost  solely  from  her  colonial  pos- 
sessions and  the  United  States  and  Argentina,  when 
her  very  national  existence  depends  on  the  sea  lanes  to 
that  food  supply  being  kept  open — a  route  which 
shortens  the  distance  to  that  food  supply  by  from 
one  thousand  five  hundred  to  three  thousand  miles  be- 
comes doubly  interesting. 


198     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

Take  a  mental  look  at  the  contour  of  North  Amer- 
ica !  All  the  big  export  harbors  of  the  Atlantic  Coast 
are  situated  at  the  broadest  bulge  of  the  continent — 
Halifax,  St.  John,  Boston,  New  York,  Philadelphia, 
Baltimore  are  all  where  the  distance  across  the  con- 
tinent from  the  grain  fields  is  widest.  That  means  a 
long  land  haul. 

Take  another  look  at  the  map — this  time  at  a  re- 
volving globe!  Any  schoolboy  knows  that  a  circle 
round  a  top  is  shorter  at  the  ends  than  around  its 
middle.  The  same  of  the  earth.  East  and  west  dis- 
tances are  shorter  the  nearer  you  are  to  the  Pole,  the 
farther  you  are  from  the  Equator. 

To  England  from  Eastern  Asia  by  Suez  is  fourteen 
to  eighteen  thousand  miles.  To  England  from  Asia 
by  San  Francisco  is  eleven  thousand  miles,  by  Seattle 
ten  thousand  miles,  by  Prince  Rupert  and  Hudson 
Bay  seven  to  eight  thousand  miles — representing  a 
saving  by  the  northern  route  of  almost  half  round 
the  world. 

Another  point — ^take  a  compass !  Stick  the  needle 
on  Hudson  Bay  and  swing  the  leg  down  round  New 
York  and  up  through  the  wheat  plains  of  the  North- 
west. Draw  lines  to  the  center  of  your  circle — to 
your  amazement,  you  find  the  lines  from  the  wheat 
plains  to  New  York  are  twice  and  thrice  as  long  as 
the  lines  from  the  wheat  plains  to  Hudson  Bay.  In 
other  words,  Mr.  Hill's  wheat  empire  is  one  thousand 


TO   EUROPE    BY   HUDSON    BAY      199 

miles  nearer  tidewater  to  Hudson  Bay  than  to  New- 
York.  The  three  prairie  provinces  of  Northwestern 
Canada  are  from  four  hundred  (for  Manitoba)  to 
eight  hundred  miles  (for  Alberta)  distant  from  ocean 
front  on  Hudson  Bay.  They  are  from  one  thousand 
two  hundred  to  two  thousand  four  hundred  miles  dis- 
tant from  tidewater  at  Montreal  and  New  York  and 
Philadelphia. 

That  is — if  land  rates  were  the  same  as  water  rates 
— the  Hudson  Bay  route  to  Europe  would  cut  rates  to 
England  from  the  Orient  by  half,  and  from  the  wheat 
plains  by  the  difference  between  one  thousand  two  hun- 
dred miles  and  four  hundred,  and  two  thousand  four 
hundred  miles  and  eight  hundred.  But  land  rates  are 
not  water  rates.  From  Alberta  to  the  Great  Lakes  is 
roughly  one  thousand  two  hundred  miles.  From  the 
Great  Lakes  to  tidewater  is  roughly  another  one  thou- 
sand two  hundred  miles — either  by  way  of  Chicago- 
Buffalo,  or  Lake  Superior-Montreal.  For  the  one 
thousand  two  hundred  miles  from  Alberta  to  the 
Great  Lakes,  grain  shippers  at  time  of  writing  pay  a 
rate  of  twenty-two  to  twenty-five  cents  a  bushel.  For 
the  one  thousand  two  hundred  miles  from  the  head  of 
the  Lakes  to  Buffalo,  the  rate  is  three  cents,  from  the 
head  of  the  Lakes  to  Montreal  five  to  six  cents.  In 
other  words,  the  rate  by  land  is  just  five  to  eight 
times  higher  than  the  rate  by  water. 

To  the  argument — shorter  distances  by  half  by  the 


200     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

northern  route — is  added  the  argument  cheaper  rates 
as  eight  to  one. 

That  is  why  for  twenty  years  Canada  has  gone 
sheer  mad  over  a  Hudson  Bay  route  to  Europe.  For 
obvious  reasons  the  ports  in  Eastern  Canada  have 
fought  the  idea  and  ridiculed  the  whole  project  as 
*'an  iron  tonic  from  rusting  rails"  for  the  cows.  That 
has  not  stopped  the  West.  Grading  is  under  way  for 
the  railroad  to  Hudson  Bay  from  the  grain  plains. 
The  Canadian  government  is  the  backer  and  the 
builder.  Construction  engines,  dredges,  steamers  now 
whistle  over  the  silences  of  the  northern  inland  sea; 
and  Port  Nelson,  which  for  three  centuries  has  been 
the  great  fur  entrepot  of  the  wintry  wastes,  now 
echoes  to  pick  and  hammer  and  blowing  locomotive 
intent  on  the  construction  of  what  is  known  as  the 
Hudson  Bay  Railroad.  Should  the  war  last  for  years 
as  wars  of  old,  and  Port  Nelson  become  a  great  grain 
port  as  for  three  centuries  it  has  been  the  greatest 
fur  port  of  the  world,  the  navies  of  Europe  may  yet 
thunder  at  one  another  along  Hudson  Bay's  shallow 
shores,  as  French  and  English  fought  there  all 
through  the  seventeenth  century. 


HI 


The  Hudson  Bay  railroad  hung  in  mid-air  for  al- 
most a  quarter  century.    It  was  regarded  by  the  East 


TO   EUROPE    BY   HUDSON    BAY     201 

as  one  of  the  West's  mad  impossible  "boom"  projects. 
Hadn't  Canada,  a  country  of  seven  million  popula- 
tion, a  railroad  system  of  29,000  miles?  Hadn't  the 
Dominion  spent  $138,000,000  on  canals  heading  traf- 
fic to  the  St.  Lawrence  ?  Why  divert  half  that  traffic 
north  to  Hudson  Bay?  Surely  three  great  transcon- 
tinental systems  for  a  country  with  a  population  not 
larger  than  New  York  State  were  enough.  So  argued 
the  East,  and  a  great  many  conservative  people  in 
the  West.  Better  make  haste  slowly,  especially  as  it 
was  becoming  more  and  more  evident  that  Canada 
would  have  to  come  to  the  aid  of  two  of  the  transcon- 
tinental or  see  them  go  bankrupt. 

Then  something  happened.  In  fact,  two  or  three 
things  happened. 

The  population,  which  had  remained  almost  sta- 
tionary for  half  a  century,  jumped  two  million  in  less 
than  ten  years.  Immigrants  began  pouring  in  at  the 
rate  of  four  hundred  thousand  a  year — ^they  were 
coming  literally  faster  than  the  railroads  could  carry 
them. 

It  sometimes  takes  an  outsider's  view  of  us  to  make 
us  realize  ourselves.  Do  you  realize — ^they  asked — 
that  your  three  grain  provinces  alone  are  three  times 
the  area  of  the  German  Empire?  Here  is  a  grain 
field  as  long  as  from  Petrograd  to  Paris  and  of  un- 
known width  north  and  south.  You  have  480,000,000 
acres  of  wheat  lands.     (The  United  States  plants  only 


202    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

60,000,000  acres  a  year  to  wheat.)  You  are  culti- 
vating only  16,000,000  acres.  If  there  is  a  grain 
blockade  now,  what  will  there  be  when  you  cultivate 
100,000,000  acres?  Yes — we  know — you  may  send 
Alberta  grain  west  by  Panama  to  Liverpool ;  but  even 
with  half  going  by  Panama,  can  the  Great  Lakes- 
St.  Lawrence  route  take  care  of  the  rest.''  We  hear 
about  a  constant  shortage  of  cars ;  of  elevators  bulg- 
ing with  grain  every  September;  of  miles  of  lake 
cargo  carriers  waiting  to  get  in  and  out  of  their 
berths  every  October  before  navigation  closes.  Do 
you  know — ^they  asked — that  you  have  five  times  more 
traffic  —  seventy-two  million  tons  —  going  through 
your  canals  than  is  expected  for  Panama  .f*  Do  you 
know  your  rail  traffic  has  jumped  from  36,000,000 
tons  in  1900  to  90,000,000  tons  in  1912.?  If  you 
sent  200,000,000  bushels  of  wheat  abroad  in  1912 
and  158,000,000  bushels  in  1914 — a  poor  year — what 
will  you  send  in  1920  with  twice  as  much  land  under 
wheat .'' 

Two  other  comparatively  unpondered  facts  were 
the  hammers  that  drove  the  argument  for  a  Hudson 
Bay  route  home  and  forced  the  Canadian  govern- 
ment, irrespective  of  party,  to  back  the  project.  The 
two  facts  were  these — of  Canada's  agricultural  ex- 
ports eighty  per  cent,  went  to  Great  Britain.  In 
spite  of  Canada  spending  a  billion  on  her  transporta- 
tion system,  look  at  the  fact  well — it  is  a  poser — only 


TO   EUROPE    BY   HUDSON    BAY     203 

from  thirty-two  to  forty  per  cent,  of  her  export  trade 
went  out  by  Canadian  routing.  Why  was  that?  The 
Department  of  Railroads  and  Canals  in  its  annual  re- 
port explains  elaborately  that  sixty  per  cent,  of  West- 
em  Canadian  grain  went  out  by  the  Duluth-BufFalo 
route  instead  of  Ft.  William-Montreal  because  the 
lake  rate  of  the  former  was  cheaper  as  three  to 
six  cents  a  bushel;  but  there  is  nothing  in  this  ar- 
gument because  Montreal  is  tidewater.  Buffalo  is 
not.  To  the  cheaper  Buffalo  rate  you  must  add  five 
cents  to  New  York,  proving  the  American  routing 
really  two  cents  a  bushel  higher.  Yet  sixty  per  cent, 
of  Western  Canadian  wheat  went  out  by  the  costlier 
routing.  Why.?  For  the  same  reason  that  if  you  jam 
a  bag  too  full  it  bursts.  Because  the  Canadian  trans- 
continentals  simply  could  not  take  care  of  the  traflSc 
blockading  tracks  and  ports  and  elevators. 

So  in  spite  of  the  funny  man's  jokes  about  a  Hud- 
son Bay  route  being  "iron  tonic  for  the  cows,"  Can- 
ada launched  on  another  all-red,  to-the-sea  railroad 
project. 

IV 

What  of  the  road  itself? 

I  camped  in  the  region  a  few  years  ago  when  the 
venture  was  still  in  air.  The  wheat  plains  terminate 
just  west  of  Lake  Winnipeg  in  an  interminable  swamp 
region  that  has  been  the  home  of  small  furs  from  the 


204.    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

beginning  of  time.  Saskatchewan  River  here  hterally 
widens  to  seventy  miles  of  swamp,  where  you  can  barely 
find  foot  room  dry  soled  except  in  winter,  when  the 
marsh  turns  to  iron  ice  twelve  feet  thick.  Through 
this  swamp  country  runs  a  ridge  of  rock  northeasterly 
to  Hudson  Bay.  Down  this  ridge  run  Nelson  and 
Hayes  and  Churchill  Rivers  in  a  succession  of  rapids 
and  lakes,  wild  rough  barren  country,  where  you  can 
paddle  in  summer  or  course  by  dog-train  in  winter 
for  four  hundred  miles  without  sight  of  arable  land 
or  human  dwelling.  Along  this  ridge  the  railroad 
runs  from  the  wheat  plains.  It  is  a  route  destined 
for  the  present  to  be  barren  of  local  traffic,  but  that 
also  is  true  of  the  stretches  along  Lake  Superior,  or 
across  the  desert  of  the  Southwest.  Back  from  the 
ridge  coal  deposits  have  been  found,  and  traces  of 
copper,  the  mines  of  which  have  not  yet  been  located. 
I  myself  saw  chunks  of  pure  copper  from  the  Church- 
ill River  region  the  size  of  one's  hand,  but  the  veins 
from  which  the  Indians  brought  it  have  not  yet  been 
located.  In  time  these  great  deposits  may  be  worked 
as  oil  and  coal  and  gold  and  silver  have  been  taken 
from  the  American  Desert,  but  for  the  near  future 
the  Hudson  Bay  Railroad  will  carry  little  traffic  but 
that  received  at  its  terminals. 

The  western  terminal  connecting  with  the  wheat 
railroads  Is  the  Pas,  an  old,  very  old  fur  post  of  the 


TO    EUROPE    BY    HUDSON    BAY      206 

French  wood-runner  days,  on  the  Saskatchewan*  west 
of  Lake  Winnipeg.  Here  the  railroad  touches  the 
Canada  Northern  and  will  doubtless  later  connect 
with  the  Canadian  Pacific  Railroad  and  Grand  Trunk. 
To  any  one  who  knows  the  region  well  it  seems  almost 
a  pity  that  the  western  terminus  could  not  have  been 
Grand  Rapids  just  northwest  of  Lake  Winnipeg. 
Here  is  a  fine  wooded  high  park  country  with  the  un- 
limited water  power  of  nine  miles  of  a  continental 
river  walled  into  a  canyon  half  a  mile  wide.  But  the 
country  west  of  Lake  Winnipeg  is  as  yet  untouched 
by  a  railroad,  though  one  can  hardly  conceive  of  a 
city  not  some  day  springing  up  at  this  the  head  of 
Manitoba  navigation.  Eastward  from  the  Pas  to 
Hudson  Bay  it  is  four  hundred  miles  plus.  Construc- 
tion presents  no  great  difficulties  except  bridging,  and 
that  can  hardly  be  compared  to  the  difficulties  of  can- 
yons in  the  Rockies  and  drouth  in  the  desert. 

For  years  there  was  sharp  contest  whether  the  ter- 
minus on  the  Bay  should  be  Nelson  or  Churchill. 
Churchill  is  one  of  the  best  harbors  in  the  world,  land 
locked,  rock  protected  and  fathomless ;  and  Nelson  is 
probably  one  of  the  worst — shallow,  with  sand  bars 
caused  by  the  confluence  of  the  two  great  rivers  emp- 
tying here,  exposed  to  open  sea.  But  the  balance  of 
favor  on  the  Bay  is  how  long  can  navigation  be  kept 
open.     Navigation  is  open  a  month  earlier  and  a 


206     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

month  later  at  Nelson  than  at  Churchill;  so  the  Do- 
minion dredges  have  gone  to  work  to  make  Nelson  a  fit 
harbor. 

How  long  is  navigation  open  on  the  Bay?  The 
Dominion  government  has  sent  three  expeditions  to 
ascertain  this,  though  data  might  have  been  obtained 
from  the  Archives  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Fur  Com- 
pany covering  the  record  of  ovey  two  hundred  years. 
Both  the  Archives  and  the  official  expeditions  record 
the  same — navigation  opens  between  the  middle  of 
May  and  the  first  of  June,  and  closes  about  the  end 
of  October.  Seasons  have  been  known  when  naviga- 
tion remained  open  till  New  Year's,  but  this  was  un- 
usual. So  as  far  as  the  opening  and  closing  of  navi- 
gation Is  considered,  the  Hudson  Bay  route  is  not 
far  different  from  the  Great  Lakes. 

Hudson  Bay  Itself  Is  in  area  about  the  size  of  the 
Mediterranean.  Because  It  is  so  far  north  the  Impres- 
sion prevails  that  It  Is  afloat  with  Ice.  This  Is  a  false 
impression.  Hudson  Bay  lies  In  the  same  latitude  as 
the  North  Sea  and  the  Baltic,  which  are  freighted  with 
Russian  and  German  commerce,  but  the  climate,  of 
course,  is  colder.  The  Ice,  which  has  given  the  great 
inland  sea  Its  ill  repute,  comes  from  the  Pole  and  goes 
out  through  the  Straits,  seldom  coming  down  the  Bay 
in  the  season  of  navigation. 

The  Straits  are  the  real  crux  of  the  Hudson  Bay 


TO    EUROPE    BY    HUDSON    BAY      207 

route  to  Europe,  and  there  is  no  narrow  neck  of  land 
to  cut  a  way  of  escape  through  to  open  sea  as  at  Kiel 
and  Cape  Cod.  The  Straits  have  been  navigated  by 
fur-traders  since  1670,  but  the  fur-traders  could  take 
a  week  or  a  month  to  the  four  hundred  and  fifty  miles 
of  Straits.  They  could  afford  the  time  to  float  back  and 
forward  with  the  ice  packs  for  six  weeks,  and  as  many 
as  seven  vessels  have  been  wrecked  in  ten  years.  To 
this  tale  of  wreckage  in  the  Straits,  friends  of  the 
Hudson  Bay  route  answer  as  follows : 

First,  the  fur-traders'  vessels  were  little  discarded 
admiralty  vessels  of  small  tonnage  and  rickety  con- 
struction. Give  us  ice  jammers  such  as  the  Russians 
use  on  the  Baltic,  built  narrow  and  high  of  oak,  not 
steel,  to  ride  and  crush  down  through  the  ice ;  and  we 
can  take  care  of  high  insurance  rates.  Second,  the 
Straits  are  still  an  utterly  uncharted  sea  four  hundred 
and  fifty  miles  long  and  from  seventy  to  one  hundred 
and  fifty  wide.  This  is  not  so  long  as  the  passage 
up  the  St.  Lawrence.  In  such  an  inland  sea  as 
these  Straits  there  must  exist  safe  as  well  as  un- 
safe channels,  shelters,  smooth  reaches.  Let  us  get 
the  Straits  charted  and  marked  with  buoys,  with 
telegraph  and  cable  points,  and  we  shall  navigate  these 
four  hundred  and  fifty  miles.  The  questions  of  light- 
houses need  not  bother  the  Straits,  for  the  season  of 
navigation  is  also  the  season  of  long  daylight. 


208     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 


Three  advantages  must  be  put  on  the  credit  side  of 
the  Hudson  Bay  route : 

Distances  to  tidewater  cut  by  half. 

Distances  to  Europe  cut  by  a  third. 

Rates  reduced  on  grain  as  eight  to  one. 

Against  these  advantages  must  be  placed  three 
handicaps : 

The  danger  of  an  uncharted  sea  in  the  Straits. 

High  insurance. 

Necessity  for  enormous  elevator  and  storage  room. 

Mr.  Hill's  wheat  country  may  begin  wheat  cutting 
in  July.  The  Canadian  Northwest  is  lucky  if  it  cuts 
before  the  eighth  of  August.  Consider  the  area  of  the 
big  wheat  farms !  The  whole  of  August  is  taken  up 
with  cutting  and  threshing.  It  is  September  or  Octo- 
ber, before  the  wheat  is  hauled  to  market,  and  it  is  No- 
vember before  it  reaches  seaboard.  In  November  nav- 
igation on  the  Bay  closes,  and  one  hundred,  perhaps 
two  hundred  million  bushels  of  wheat  must  be  held  by 
the  farmers,  or  the  elevators,  till  May.  This  means 
interest  on  money  out  of  the  farmer's  pocket  for  six 
months,  or  storage  charges.  On  the  other  hand,  there 
will  be  no  danger  of  stored  wheat  "heating"  on  the 
Bay.  The  cold  there  is  of  too  sharp  a  type,  but  this 
is  a  danger  in  many  of  the  all-the-year-round  open 
harbors. 


TO    EUROPE    BY   HUDSON    BAY     209 

For  twenty  years  the  Hudson  Bay  railroad  has  been 
a  project  up  in  air.  It  is  now  a  project  on  graded 
roadbed.  Before  these  words  are  in  print  Hudson  Bay 
Railroad  will  be  on  wheels  and  tracks.  Then  the  real 
difficulty  of  the  Straits  will  be  faced,  and  probably — 
as  Russia  has  overcome  the  difficulties  of  the  Baltic — 
so  will  the  Canadian  Northwest  overcome  the  difficul- 
ties of  this  hyperborean  sea. 


CHAPTER  Xn 


SOME  INDUSTRIAL  PEOBLEMS 


The  contest  between  capital  and  labor  in  Canada 
has  never  become  that  armed  camp  divided  by  a  chasm 
of  hatred  known  in  other  lands.  This  for  two  reasons : 
First,  the  labor  of  yesterday  is  the  capital  of  to-day, 
and  the  labor  of  to-day  is  the  capital  of  to-morrow. 
Second,  from  the  very  nature  of  Canada's  greatest 
wealth — agricultural  lands — ^the  substantial  propor- 
tion of  the  population  consists  of  land  owners,  vested 
righters,  respecters  of  property  interests  because  they 
themselves  are  property  holders.  The  city  dweller  in 
Canada  has  been  from  the  very  nature  of  things  the 
anachronism,  the  anomaly,  the  parasite,  the  extraneous 
outgrowth  on  the  main  body  of  production. 

To  take  the  first  reason  why  capital  and  labor  has 
not  been  divided  in  hostile  camps  in  Canada,  because 
the  labor  of  yesterday  is  the  capital  of  to-day — I  am 
not  dealing  with  speculative  arguments  and  opinions.  I 
am  trying  to  set  down  facts.  The  owner  of  the  largest 
fortune  west  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  in  Canada  began 

210 


SOME    INDUSTRIAL    PROBLEMS      211 

life  with  a  pick  and  shovel.  The  owner  of  the  rich- 
est timber  limits  in  British  Columbia  began  at  a  dollar 
and  twenty-five  cents  a  day  piling  slabs.  The  wealth- 
iest meat  packer  east  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  was 
*'bucking"  and  "breaking"  bronchoes  thirty  years 
ago  at  twenty-five  dollars  a  month.  The  packer 
who  comes  next  to  him  in  wealth  began  life  in 
Pt.  Douglas,  Winnipeg,  loading  frozen  hogs.  The 
richest  newspaper  man  in  Canada  began  life  so 
poor  that  he  and  his  father  hauled  the  first  edi- 
tions of  their  paper  to  customers  on  a  hand  sled.  The 
four  men  who  are  to-day  the  greatest  powers  in  the 
railroad  world  of  the  Dominion  began  life,  one  as  a 
stone  mason,  another  as  a  lumber- jack,  a  third  as  a 
store  keeper,  a  fourth  as  a  telegraph  operator.  I  do 
not  think  I  am  wrong  in  saying  that  the  richest  whole- 
saler in  Canada  reached  the  scene  of  his  present  activi- 
ties with  his  entire  earthly  possessions  in  a  pocket 
handkerchief  and  a  tin  lunch  pail.  Of  two  of  the  most 
powerful  men  who  ever  came  out  of  the  maritime 
provinces,  one  swept  a  village  store  for  his  living  at 
a  dollar  and  fifty  cents  a  week;  another  reached  St. 
John,  New  Brunswick,  from  his  home  in  the  back- 
woods, dressed  in  a  home-made  suit,  which  his  mother 
had  spun  and  carded  from  their  own  wool.  The  fact 
that  the  door  of  opportunity  is  open  to  the  talented 
tends  to  prevent  the  opening  of  a  chasm  of  hatred  be- 
tween capital  and  labor,  though  it  must  be  admitted 


212     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

that  the  warfare  of  capital  and  labor  in  the  States 
was  developing  in  the  era  when  Rockefeller  and  Car- 
negie were  hfting  themselves  from  penury  to  the 
heights  of  financial  power. 

Infinitely  more  important  is  the  second  reason.  For 
a  long  time  at  least  the  stanchest,  strongest  and  sta- 
blest part  of  Canada's  people  must  be  rooted  to  the 
soil.  Up  to  the  present  half  her  population  has  been 
rural,  and  less  than  three  per  cent,  absorbed  by  the 
factory,  the  railway,  the  labor  union.  Of  her  popula- 
tion of  7,800,000,  only  176,000  workers  belong  to 
labor  organizations,  and  ninety  per  cent,  of  these  have 
never  been  on  strike.  These  figures  alone  explain 
why  class  hatred  has  never  widened  into  a  chasm  divid- 
ing society  in  Canada. 

Why  Big  Business  has  never  dominated  govern- 
ment in  Canada  will  be  dealt  with  in  a  later  chapter, 
but  if  Big  Business  can  not  violate  law  with  impunity 
at  one  end  of  the  social  scale,  it  may  be  safely  said  that 
anarchy  will  never  violate  law  at  the  other  end  of  the 
scale. 

At  the  same  time  there  are  symptoms  appearing  in 
the  industrial  conditions  of  Canada  as  gravely  dan- 
gerous as  anything  in  her  immigration  problems. 
These  need  only  be  stated  to  be  apparent.  Where 
wages  have  increa"feed  only  ten  per  cent,  in  a  decade, 
the  cost  of  living  has  increased  fifty-one  per  cent. — 
according  to  an  official  commission  appointed  by  the 


SOME    INDUSTRIAL   PROBLEMS      213 

Ottawa  government  to  report.  Though  Canada  is  an 
agricultural  country,  in  food  products  alone,  she  pays 
ten  million  dollars  duty  yearly.  In  one  farming 
province  ten  million  dollars'  worth  of  food  is  yearly 
imported.  Why  is  this.''  Why  is  Canada  not  produc- 
ing all  the  food  she  consumes?  Because  in  certain 
sections  only  one  settler  goes  out  to  the  farm  for  four 
that  live  in  the  town. 

In  the  West,  if  you  add  up  the  population  of  all  the 
cities,  you  will  find  that  one- fourth  as  many  people  live 
in  the  cities  as  in  the  country.  In  one  province  you  will 
find  that  out  of  half  a  million  population,  three  hun- 
dred thousand  are  living  in  cities  and  towns.  This  is 
the  province  that  imports  such  quantities  of  food.  It 
is  also  the  province  that  has  more  labor  trouble  than 
all  the  other  sections  of  the  Dominion  put  together. 
Demagogues  harangue  the  city  squares  for  "the  right 
to  work,"  "the  right  to  live;"  and  mill  owners,  farm- 
ers, ranchers,  railway  builders  go  bankrupt  for  lack  of 
men  to  work.  It  is  the  province  where  the  highest 
wages  in  the  world  are  paid  for  every  form  of  labor. 
It  is  also  the  province  where  the  greatest  number  of 
people  are  idle,  and  neither  you  nor  I  nor  anybody 
else,  can  convince  the  idle  stone  mason  who  demands 
eight  dollars  a  day  that  he  keeps  himself  idle  by  not 
accepting  half  that  figure.  He  is  not  dealing  with 
*'the  robber  baron"  capitalistic  class.  He  is  dealing 
with  the  humble  householder  who  wants  to  build  but 


214>     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

can  not  afford  workmen  at  eight  dollars  to  five  dollars 
a  day,  when  he  could  afford  workmen  at  four  dollars 
to  a  dollar  and  fifty  cents  a  day. 

In  1800  only  four  per  cent,  of  the  United  States 
population  was  urban,  and  ninety-six  per  cent,  was 
rural.  By  1910  only  fifty-three  per  cent,  of  the  popu- 
lation was  rural.  Similarly  of  France  and  Great  Brit- 
ain. Sixty-five  per  cent,  of  France's  population  is 
rural,  and  France  is  prosperous,  and  her  people  are  the 
thriftiest  and  most  saving  in  the  world.  They  with 
their  tiny  savings  are  the  world's  bankers.  In  the 
United  Kingdom,  the  rural  population  has  decreased 
from  twenty-eight  per  cent,  to  twenty-three  per  cent, 
of  the  total  population.  How  about  Canada?  In 
1891  thirty-two  per  cent,  of  Canada's  people  lived 
in  towns  and  cities.  By  1901  thirty-eight  per  cent, 
were  town  dwellers.  By  1914  the  proportion  in  towns 
and  cities  is  almost  fifty  per  cent. 

The  entire  movement  of  population  from  country  to 
city  is  reflected  in  the  astounding  growth  of  the  cities. 
In  1800  Montreal  had  a  population  of  seven  thou- 
sand; in  1850,  sixty  thousand ;  by  1914,  almost  half  a 
million.  Similarly  of  Toronto,  of  Winnipeg,  of  Van- 
couver. From  nothing  in  1800,  these  cities  have  grown 
to  metropolitan  centers  of  three  hundred  thousand, 
and  their  growth  is  the  subject  of  fevered  civic  pride. 
It  ought  to  be  cause  of  gravest  alarm.  In  the  history 
of  the  world,  when  men  began  to  liive  in  a  crowded 


SOME    INDUSTRIAL    PROBLEMS      215 

cave  life,  those  nations  began  to  decline.  The  results 
are  always  the  same — an  extortionate  rise  in  the  cost 
of  food,  the  long  bread  line,  charity  where  there  ought 
to  be  labor  and  thrift,  food  riots,  terrible  tragic  con- 
trasts of  the  very  rich  and  the  very  poor,  all  the  vices 
that  go  with  crowded  housing.  When  charity  workers 
investigated  in  Toronto  and  Montreal  and  Winnipeg, 
they  found  foreigners  living  forty-three  in  five  rooms, 
twenty-four  and  fifteen  and  ten  in  one.  Wherever 
such  proportions  exist  as  to  rural  and  urban  popula- 
tion, ground  rentals  and  values  ascend  in  price  like 
overheated  mercury.  Men  begin  to  build  perpendicu- 
larly instead  of  latitudinally.  The  cave  life  of  the 
skyscraper  takes  the  place  of  the  trim  home  garden, 
and  so  greed  of  gain — interest  on  extortionate  real 
estate  values — ^takes  its  toll  of  human  life  and  virtue, 
clean  living  and  clean  thinking.  In  one  section  of 
Canada  during  ten  years,  where  there  had  been  an 
increase  of  574,878  in  the  country  population,  there 
was  an  increase  of  1,258,645  in  the  city  population. 
Between  1901  and  1911,  where  39,951  newcomers  set- 
tled in  the  country  districts  of  Quebec,  313,863  settled 
in  the  cities.  For  one  who  chose  life  in  the  open,  eight 
chose  the  tenement  and  the  sweatshop.  In  1901  Can- 
ada had  3,349,516  people  living  in  the  country,  and 
2,021,799  living  in  the  cities.  By  1911  there  were 
3,924,394  living  in  the  country,  and  3,280,440  living 
in  the  cities. 


«16     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

All  this  signifies  but  one  thing  to  Canada — a  swift 
transition  from  agricultural  status  to  industrial  life; 
and  whether  such  an  artificial  transition  bodes  good  or 
ill  for  a  land  whose  greatest  wealth  lies  in  forest  and 
mine  and  farm  remains  to  be  seen.  For  the  time  it  has 
resulted  in  a  cost  of  living  almost  prohibitive  to  the 
very  poor.  The  sweatshop,  the  tenement,  the  Ghetto, 
the  cave  life  hovel  of  Europe  have  been  reproduced  in 
the  crowded  foreign  quarters  of  Canadian  cities.  It 
means  more  than  physical  deterioration  and  moral  con- 
tamination and  degeneration  of  national  stamina.  It 
means  if  Canada  is  to  become  a  great  manufacturing 
country,  feeding  the  human  into  the  hopper  of  the  ma- 
chine that  dividends  may  pour  out,  then  she,  the 
youngest  of  the  nations,  must  compete  against  the 
oldest  and  the  strongest — Grermany,  England,  France, 
the  United  States ;  but  if  she  is  to  be  a  great  agricul- 
tural country,  then  she  has  few  peers  in  the  whole 
world.  Neither  need  she  have  any  fear.  The  nations 
of  thfr  world  must  come  to  her,  as  they  went  down  to 
Egypt,  for  bread.  The  man  on  his  own  land,  be  his 
work  good  or  ill  owns  his  own  labor  and  takes  profit  or 
loss  from  it  and  can  blame  no  one  but  himself  for  that 
profit  or  loss.  With  the  renting  out  of  a  man's  labor 
to  some  other  man  for  that  other  man's  profit  or  loss 
come  all  the  discontent  and  class  strife  of  industrial 
warfare.  Of  industrial  strife,  of  labor  riots,  of  syndi- 
calism, of  social  revolution,  of  the  few  plundering  the 


SOME    INDUSTRIAL    PROBLEMS      217 

many,  and  the  many  threatening  reprisal  in  the  form  of 
legislation  for  the  many  to  plunder  the  few — of  this 
dog-eat-dog,  internecine  Industrial  strife — Canada  has 
hitherto  known  next  to  nothing ;  but  she  is  at  the  part- 
ing of  the  ways.  The  day  that  a  preponderance  of  her 
population  becomes  urban  instead  of  rural,  that  day  a 
preponderance  of  her  population  must  ask  leave  to  live 
from  some  other  man — must  ask  leave  to  work  for 
some  other  man,  must  ask  leave  to  put  the  collar  of 
the  industrial  serf  on  the  neck  as  the  sign  of  labor 
owned  by  some  other  man.  That  day  the  preponder- 
ance of  Canada's  population  will  cease  owning  their 
own  vested  rights  and  will  begin  attacking  the  vested 
rights  of  other  men.  That  day  plutocracy  will  be- 
gin plundering  democracy,  and  the  unfit  will  begin 
plundering  the  fit,  and  the  many  will  demand  the  same 
rewards  as  the  few,  not  by  winning  those  rewards  and 
rising  to  the  plane  of  the  few,  but  by  expropriating 
those  rewards  and  pulling  the  few  down  to  the  level  of 
the  many.  To  me  it  means  the  sickling  over  a  robust 
nationhood  with  the  yellowing  hue  of  a  dollar  democ- 
racy, the  yellowing  hue  of  gnashing  social  jealousy, 
the  yellowing  hue 'of  moral  putridity  and  decadence 
and  rot.  Hitherto  every  man  has  stood  on  his  own 
legs  in  Canada.  There  has  been  no  weak-kneed, 
puling  greedy  mob  bellowing  for  pap  from  the 
breasts  of  a  state  treasury — demanding  the  rewards 
of  industry  and  thrift  which  they  have  been  too  weak 


218     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

and  shiftless  and  useless  to  earn.  But  Canada  is  at 
the  parting  of  the  ways.  The  day  more  men  live  in 
the  cities  demanding  food  than  live  on  the  soil  produc- 
ing it — which  God  forfend — that  day  Canada  goes 
down  in  the  welter  of  industrial  war  and  social  up- 
heaval. 

Hitherto  no  statesman  has  arisen  in  Canada  who  re- 
motely sensed  the  impending  evil,  much  less  made  an 
effort  to  avert  the  doom  that  has  come  like  a  cloud 
above  the  well-being  of  every  modern  country.  The 
man  who  makes  it  a  national  policy  in  Canada  to  at- 
tract the  settler  to  the  soil  rather  than  to  the  city  hovel 
will  in  the  future  annals  of  this  great  nation  be  rated 
above  a  Napoleon  or  a  Bismarck.*  This  to  me  is  the 
crux  of  the  very  greatest  and  most  acute  problem  con- 
fronting the  Dominion's  future  destiny. 


II 


In  a  country  where  organized  labor  numbers  only 
176,000  out  of  7,800,000,  labor  problems  can  hardly 
be  set  down  as  acute.  They  do  not  split  society  asun- 
der as  they  do  elsewhere.  I  am  glad  of  it.  I  am  glad 
that  in  Canada  up  to  the  present  labor  is  only  capital 
in  the  inchoate.  I  should  be  sorry  if  the  day  ever 
came  when  labor  was  the  serf,  and  capital  the  robber 


*  Thomas  Jefferson  desired  such  a  rural  future  for  the 
United  States  and  deplored  the  day  of  cities  and  industrialism. 
It  came,  nevertheless. — The  Editor. 


SOME    INDUSTRIAL    PROBLEMS      219 

baron,  as — let  us  frankly  acknowledge — it  is  else- 
where. 

In  this  connection  three  points  should  be  empha- 
sized. Whether  they  should  be  praised  or  blamed  I 
do  not  know ;  but  the  points  are  these : 

The  Senate  in  Canada  being  appointed  for  life  has 
acted  as  a  breakwater  of  adamant  and  reinforced  con- 
crete against  all  labor  or  capital  legislation  that  has 
arisen  from  the  passions  of  the  moment.  More  than 
once  when  labor  or  capital,  holding  the  whip  handle 
in  the  Commons,  would  have  forced  through  hasty 
legislation  as  to  compensation,  as  to  liability,  as  to 
non-liability — the  leaders  in  the  Commons  have  said 
frankly  in  caucus  to  the  Senate :  We  are  dependent  on 
the  vote  for  our  places  here.  You  are  not.  We  are 
letting  this  fool  bill  through,  but  we  are  letting  it 
through  because  we  know  you  will  kill  it.    Kill  it ! 

In  the  next  place,  "the  twilight  zone"  between  fed- 
eral and  provincial  power  in  matters  of  labor  has 
proved  an  unmitigated  curse.  When  the  syndicalists 
of  Europe,  known  in  America  as  the  Industrial  Work- 
ers of  the  World,  succeeded  in  tying  up  railroad  con- 
struction and  almost  ruining  the  contractors  of  two 
transcontinental  systems  in  British  Columbia  a  few 
years  ago,  endless  delay  in  terminating  an  impossible 
situation  occurred  through  the  province  trying  to 
throw  the  burden  of  dealing  with  the  matter  on  the 
Dominion,  and  the  Dominion  trying  to  throw  the  bur- 


S20     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

den  on  the  province.  Both  province  and  Dominion 
were  afraid  of  the  labor  vote.  The  losses  caused  dur- 
ing that  three  months'  strike  in  the  construction  camps 
indirectly  afterward  fell  on  the  Canadian  people;  for 
the  embarrassed  transcontinental  had  to  come  to  the 
Dominion  government  for  aid;  and  the  Dominion 
government  is,  after  all,  the  people. 

"I  pray  God,"  said  a  Cabinet  Minister  in  Ottawa  to 
me  at  the  time,  "that  Imperial  Federation  may  never 
come ;  if  it  adds  to  our  woes  another  'twilight  zone'  as 
to  Dominion  and  Imperial  powers." 


Ill 


It  seems  almost  ungracious  in  this  connection  to  say 
that  Canada's  far-famed  Arbitration  Act  has  been 
overrated.  That  it  has  accomplished  some  good  and 
settled  many  controversies  no  reasonable  person  will 
deny,  but  it  is  not  a  panacea  for  all  ills. 

Here  is  the  difficulty  as  to  arbitration.  It  is  not 
unlike  the  situation  of  Belgium  regarding  Germany 
in  the  great  war.  Arbitration  depends  on  "a  scrap 
of  paper."  What  if  some  one  tears  up  "the  scrap  of 
paper".?  What  if  one  side  says  there  is  nothing  to 
arbitrate.?  Twenty  years  ago — yes — wages,  hours, 
conditions  of  labor — could  have  been  arbitrated;  but 
to-day  the  contest  in  the  industrial  world  is  often  not 
for  wages  and  hours  of  labor. 


SOME    INDUSTRIAL   PROBLEMS      2S1 

**Demand  three  dollars  a  day  for  an  eight-hour  day, 
to-day,"  I  heard  an  Industrial  Worker  of  the  World 
shout  in  a  Vancouver  strike.  "Demand  four  dollars  a 
day  to-morrow,  till  you  secure  four  dollars  a  day  for  a 
four-hour  day — till  your  ascending  wages  expropriate 
capital — take  over  capital  and  all  industry  to  be  oper- 
ated for  labor." 

In  the  great  struggle  between  the  railroads  and  the 
I.  W.  W.'s  in  British  Columbia,  Canada's  Arbitration 
Act  fell  down  hopelessly  simply  because  there  was 
nothing  to  arbitrate.  Labor  said :  We  shall  paralyze 
all  industry,  or  operate  all  industry  for  labor's  profit 
solely.  Capital  said — you  shall  not.  There  the  two 
tied  in  deadlock  for  months,  and  there  all  arbitration 
acts  must  often  tie  in  deadlock  in  industrial  warfare. 
That  is  why  I  hope  industrial  warfare  will  never  be- 
come a  part  of  Canada's  national  life.  That  is  why  I 
hope  and  pray  every  Canadian  settler  will  become  a 
vested  righter  by  owning  and  operating  his  own  acres 
till  Death  lays  him  in  God's  Acre. 


IV 


In  a  country  where  the  public  debt  is  only  $350,- 
000,000  or  forty-five  dollars  per  head,  and  the  na- 
tional income  is  $1,500,000,000  from  farm,  factory, 
forest  and  mine — or  two  hundred  dollars  per  head 
and   that    fairly    well    distributed — for   the    present 


222    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

there  is  little  to  fear  of  social  revolution.  It  is  not 
the  social  revolution  that  I  fear  for  Canada.  It  is 
the  canker  of  social  hate  and  jealousy  preceding  revo- 
lution. If  fifty  per  cent,  of  the  population  can 
be  kept  owning  and  operating  their  own  land,  that 
social  canker  will  never  infect  Canada's  national  life 
as  a  whole. 


CHAPTER  Xni 


HOW   GOVERNED 


Reference  has  been  made  to  the  facts  that  Big 
Business  has  up  to  the  present  been  unable  to  get  con- 
trol of  the  reins  of  government  in  Canada,  that  the 
courts  have  been  kept  comparatively  free  of  political 
influence  and  that  the  doors  of  underground  politics 
are  not  easily  pried  open  by  corruption.  Why  is 
this?  Canadians  would  fain  take  unction  to  them- 
selves that  it  is  owing  to  their  superior  national  in- 
tegrity, but  this  is  nonsense. 

Exuberant  forest  growth  is  always  characterized 
by  some  fungus  and  dry  rot.  How  has  Canada 
escaped  so  much  of  this  fungus  excrescence  of  repre- 
sentative government?  To  get  at  the  reason  for  this 
it  is  necessary  to  trace  back  for  a  little  space  the  his- 
toric growth  of  Canada's  form  of  government.  We 
speak  of  Canada's  constitution  being  the  British 
North  America  Act.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Canada's 
constitution  is  more  than  an  act — more  than  a  dry 
and  hard  and  inflexible  formula  to  which  growth  must 

22S 


224     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

conform.  Rather  than  plaster  cast  into  which  grow- 
ing Hfe  must  fit  itself,  Canada's  constitution  is  a  liv- 
ing organism  evolved  from  her  own  mistakes  and 
struggles  of  the  past  and  her  own  needs  as  to  the 
present.  Canada's  constitution  is  not  some  pocket 
formula  which  some  doctrinaire — with  apologies  to 
France — has  whipped  out  of  his  pocket  to  remedy  all 
ills.  Canada's  constitution  is  like  the  scientific  data 
of  empirical  medicine;  it  is  the  result  of  centuries' 
experiments,  none  the  less  scientific  because  uncon- 
scious. 

One  need  not  trace  the  growth  of  government  to 
the  days  prior  to  English  rule.  When  England  took 
over  Canada  by  the  Treaty  of  Paris  in  1763,  the  main 
thing  to  remember  is  that  the  French-Canadian  was 
guaranteed  the  free  exercise  of  his  religion.  This — 
and  not  innate  loyalty  to  an  alien  government — ^was 
the  real  reason  for  Quebec  refusing  to  cast  in  her  lot 
with  the  revolting  American  colonies.  This  was  the 
reason  for  Quebec  remaining  stanch  in  the  War  of 
1812,  and  this  is  the  reason  for  Quebec  to-day  stand- 
ing a  solid  unit  against  annexation.  We  must  not 
forget  what  a  high  emissary  from  Rome  once  jocu- 
larly said  of  a  religious  quarrel  in  Canada — Quebec 
was  more  Catholic  than  the  Pope. 

Following  the  military  regime  of  the  Conquest  came 
the  Quebec  Act  of  1774. — Please  note,  contempora- 
neous with  the  uprising  of  the  American  colonies, 


HOW    GOVERNED  225 

Canada  is  given  her  first  constitution.  The  Governor 
and  legislative  council  are  to  be  appointed  by  the 
Crown,  and  full  freedom  of  worship  is  guaranteed. 
French  civil  law  and  English  criminal  law  are  estab- 
lished; and  the  Church  is  confirmed  in  its  title  to  ec- 
clesiastical property — which  was  right  when  you  con- 
sider that  the  foundations  of  the  Church  in  Quebec 
are  laid  in  the  blood  of  martyrs.  Just  here  intervenes 
the  element  which  compelled  the  reshaping  of  Canada's 
destiny.  When  the  American  colonies  gained  their 
independence,  there  came  across  the  border  to  what 
are  now  New  Brunswick  and  Nova  Scotia  and  Ontario 
some  forty  thousand  Loyalists  mainly  from  New  Eng- 
land and  the  South.  These  Loyalists,  of  course,  re- 
fused to  be  dominated  by  French  rule ;  so  the  Consti- 
tutional Act  was  passed  in  1791  by  the  Imperial  Par- 
liament. The  people  of  Canada  were  represented  for 
the  first  time  in  an  assembly  elected  by  themselves. 
The  Governor-General  for  Quebec — Lower  Canada — 
and  the  Lieutenant-Governor  for  Ontario — Upper 
Canada — were  both  appointed  by  the  Crown.  The  Ex- 
ecutive, or  Cabinet,  was  chosen  by  the  Governor.  The 
weakness  of  the  new  system  was  glaringly  apparent 
on  the  surface.  While  the  assembly  was  elected  in 
each  province  by  the  people,  the  assembly  had  no 
direct  control  over  the  Executive.  Downing  Street, 
England,  chose  the  Governors ;  and  the  Governors 
chose  their  own  junta  of  advisers ;  and  all  the  abuses 


226     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

of  the  Family  Compact  arose,  which  led  to  the  Rebel- 
lion of  '37  under  William  Lyon  MacKenzie  in  On- 
tario and  Louis  Papineau  in  Quebec.  Judges  at  this 
time  sat  in  both  Houses,  and  Canada  learned  the  bit- 
ter lesson  of  keeping  her  judiciary  out  of  politics.  As 
the  power  of  appointment  rested  exclusively  with  the 
Governor  and  his  circle,  it  can  be  believed  that  the 
French  of  Quebec  suffered  disabilities  and  prejudice. 

Hopelessly  at  sea  as  to  the  cause  of  the  continual 
unrest  in  her  colonies  and  undoubtedly  sad  from  the 
loss  of  her  American  possessions,  England  now  sent 
out  a  commissioner  to  investigate  the  trouble;  and  it 
is  to  the  findings  of  this  commissioner  that  the  United 
Kingdom  has  since  owed  her  world-wide  success  in 
governing  people  by  letting  them  govern  themselves. 
People  sometimes  ask  why  England  has  been  so  suc- 
cessful in  governing  one-fifth  of  the  habitable  globe. 
She  does  not  govern  one-fifth  the  habitable  globe. 
She  lets  much  of  it  govern  itself;  and  it  was  Lord 
Durham,  coming  out  as  Governor-General  and  high 
commissioner  at  this  time,  who  laid  the  foundations  of 
England's  success  in  colonizing.  His  report  has  been 
the  Magna  Charta  and  Declaration  of  Independence 
of  the  self-governing  colonies  of  the  British  Empire. 

First  of  all,  government  must  be  entrusted  to  the 
house  representing  the  people.  Second,  the  granting 
of  moneys  must  be  controlled  by  those  paying  the 
taxes.    Third,  the  Executive  must  be  responsible  not 


HOW    GOA'ERNED  227 

only  to  the  Crown  but  to  the  representatives  of  the 
people.  It  is  here  the  Canadian  system  differs  from 
the  American.  The  Secretary,  or  Cabinet  Minister,  can 
not  hold  office  one  day  under  the  disapproval  of  the 
House,  no  matter  what  his  tenure  of  office. 

The  Act  of  1840  resulted  from  Durham's  report. 
Upper  and  Lower  Canada  were  united  under  one  gov- 
ernment— which  was  really  the  forerunner  of  confed- 
eration in  '67.  The  House  was  given  exclusive  control 
of  taxation  and  expenditure.  Nothing  awakened  Can- 
ada so  acutely  to  the  necessity  of  federating  all  Brit- 
ish North  America  as  the  Civil  War  in  the  United 
States,  when  the  States  Right  party  fought  to  secede. 
Red  River  and  British  Columbia  had  become  peopled. 
The  maritime  provinces  settled  by  French  from  Que- 
bec and  New  England  Loyalists  were  alien  in  thought 
from  Upper  and  Lower  Canada.  The  cry  "54-40 
or  fight,"  the  setting  up  of  a  provisional  government 
by  Oregon,  the  Riel  Rebelhon  in  Manitoba,  the  rush 
of  California  gold  miners  to  Cariboo — all  were  straws 
in  a  restless  wind  blowing  Canada's  destiny  hither  and 
whither.  Confederation  was  not  a  pocket  theory.  It 
was  a  result  born  of  necessity,  and  the  main  prin- 
ciples of  confederation  embodied  in  the  British 
North  America  Act  had  been  foreshadowed  in  Dur- 
ham's report.  Durham  himself  suffered  the  fate  of 
too  many  of  the  world's  great.  He  had  come  out 
to  Canada  to  settle  a  bitter  dispute  between  the  little 


^28    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

oligarchy  round  the  royal  Governor  and  the  people. 
He  sided  with  neither  and  was  abjured  by  both.  The 
sentences  against  the  patriots  he  had  set  aside  or 
softened.  The  royahsts  he  condemned  but  did  not 
punish.  Both  sides  poured  charges  against  Durham 
into  the  office  of  the  Colonial  Secretary  in  England. 
Durham  died  of  a  broken  heart,  but  his  report  laid 
the  foundation  of  England's  future  colonial  policy. 


II 


By  the  British  North  America  Act  of  1867,  passed 
by  the  Imperial  Parliament,  Ontario,  Quebec,  Nova 
Scotia  and  New  Brunswick  came  into  the  Union. 
Later  Prince  Edward  Island,  Manitoba,  the  North- 
west Territories  and  British  Columbia  joined.  Up  to 
the  present  Newfoundland  has  stood  aside.  Under 
the  British  North  America  Act,  Canada  is  ruled 
to-day. 

There  is  first  the  Imperial  government  represented 
by  a  Governor-General.  The  commandant  of  Can- 
ada's regular  militia  is  also  an  Imperial  officer. 

There  is  second  the  federal  government  with  ex- 
ecutive, legislative  and  judicial  powers;  or  a  cabinet, 
a  parliament,  a  supreme  court. 

There  are  third  the  provincial  governments  with 
executive,  legislative  and  judicial  powers. 

Details  of  each  section  of  government  can  not  be 


HOW   GOVERNED  229 

given  here ;  but  several  facts  should  be  noted ;  for  they 
explain  the  practical  workings  of  Canada's  system. 

The  Witenagemot — or  Saxon  council  of  wise  men 
— stands  for  Canada's  ideal  of  a  parliament.  It  is 
not  so  much  a  question  of  spoils.  It  is  not  so  much  a 
case  of  "the  outs"  ejecting  "the  ins."  I  have  never 
heard  of  any  party  in  Canada  taking  the  ground, 
"Here — you  have  been  in  long  enough ;  it's  our  turn." 
I  have  never  heard  a  suggestion  as  to  tenure  of  office 
being  confined  to  "one  term"  for  fear  of  a  leader  be- 
coming a  Napoleon.  If  a  leader  be  efficient — and  it 
is  thought  the  more  experienced  he  is,  the  more  ef- 
ficient he  will  be — he  can  hold  office  as  long  as  he  lives 
if  the  people  keep  on  electing  him. 

The  Cabinet — or  inner  council  of  advisers  to  the 
Governor-General — must  be  elected  by  the  people  and 
directly  responsible  to  the  House.  At  its  head  stands 
the  Premier. 

Within  her  own  jurisdiction  Canada's  legislature 
has  absolute  power.  If  her  treaties  or  acts  should 
conflict  with  Imperial  interests,  they  would  be  dis- 
allowed by  the  Imperial  Privy  Council  as  unconstitu- 
tional, or  ultra  vires.  Likewise  of  the  provinces,  if 
any  of  their  acts  conflicted  with  federal  interests,  they 
would  be  disallowed  as  ultra  vires. 

Should  the  Governor-General  differ  from  the  Cabi- 
net in  office,  he  must  either  recede  from  his  own  posi- 
tion or  dismiss  his  advisers  and  send  them  to  the  coun- 


230     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

try  for  the  verdict  of  the  people.  Should  the  people 
endorse  the  Ministry,  the  Governor-General  must 
either  resign  or  recede  from  his  stand.  I  know  of  no 
case  where  such  a  contingency  has  arisen.  A  Gov- 
ernor-General Is  careful  never  to  conflict  with  a  Min- 
istry endorsed  by  the  electorate. 

Once  a  man  has  received  an  appointment  to  a  posi- 
tion In  the  civil  service  of  Canada  he  must  keep  abso- 
lutely aloof  from  politics.  This  is  not  a  law  but  it  Is  a 
custom,  the  violation  of  which  would  cost  a  man  his 
position. 

The  Parliament  In  the  Dominion  consists  of  the 
Commons  and  the  Senate.  The  Commons  are  elected 
by  the  people.  The  Senators  are  appointed  by  the 
Governor-General,  strictly  under  advice  of  the  party 
in  office,  for  life.  Senators  must  be  thirty  years  of 
age  and  possess  property  over  four  thousand  dollars 
in  value  above  their  liabilities.  The  Senator  resides 
in  the  district  which  he  represents.  The  Commoner 
may  represent  a  district  in  which  he  does  not  reside, 
and,  on  the  whole,  this  Is  more  of  an  advantage  than 
a  disadvantage.  It  permits  a  district  that  has  special 
needs  to  choose  a  man  of  great  character  and  power 
resident  in  another  district.  If  he  fails  to  meet  the 
peculiar  needs  of  that  district,  he  will  not  be  reelected. 
If  he  meets  the  needs  of  the  district  which  he  repre- 
sents he  has  the  additional  prestige  of  his  influence 
in  another  electoral  district.     A  Senator  can  be  re- 


HOW   GOVERNED  231 

moved  for  only  four  reasons:  bankruptcy,  absence, 
change  of  citizenship,  conviction  of  crime. 

At  a  time  when  the  United  States  is  so  generally  in 
favor  of  the  election  of  Senators  by  direct  vote,  when 
England  is  trending  so  preponderately  in  favor  of 
curbing  the  veto  power  of  the  House  of  Lords,  it  seems 
remarkable  that  Canada  never  questions  the  power  of 
the  Senator  appointed  for  life. 

Though  officially  supposed  to  be  appointed  by  the 
Governor-General,  the  Senator  is  in  reality  never  ap- 
pointed except  on  recommendation  of  the  prevailing 
Cabinet  which  means — the  party  in  power.  The  ap- 
pointments being  for  life  and  the  emolument  sufficient 
to  guarantee  a  good  living  conformable  with  the  style 
required  by  the  official  position,  ihe  Senator  appointed 
for  life — like  the  judge  appointed  for  life — soon 
shows  himself  independent  of  purely  party  behests. 
He  is  depended  upon  by  the  Commoners  to  veto  and 
arrest  popular  movements,  which  would  be  inimical 
to  public  good,  but  which  the  Commoner  dare  not  de- 
feat for  fear  of  defeat  in  reelection.  For  instance, 
a  few  years  ago  a  labor  bill  was  introduced  in  the 
Commons  as  to  compensation  for  injuries.  In  theory, 
it  was  all  right.  In  practice,  it  was  a  blackmail  levy 
against  employers.  The  Commoners  did  not  dare  re- 
ject it  for  fear  of  the  vote  in  one  particular  province. 
What  they  did  was  meet  the  Senate  in  unofficial  cau- 
cuses.    They  said:   We  shall  pass  this  bill  all  three 


232    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

readings ;  but  we  depend  on  you — ^the  Senate — ^to  re- 
ject it.  We  can  go  to  the  province  and  say  we  passed 
the  bill  and  ask  for  the  support  of  that  province; 
but  because  the  bill  would  be  inimical  to  the  best  in- 
terests of  other  provinces,  we  depend  on  you,  the 
Senate,  to  defeat  it.    And  the  Senate  defeated  it. 

When  older  democracies  are  curtailing  the  strength 
of  veto  power  in  upper  houses,  it  is  curious  to  find  this 
dependence  of  a  young  democracy  on  veto  power.  In- 
stead of  the  life  privileges  leading  to  an  abuse  of 
insolence  and  Big  Business,  up  to  the  present  in  Can- 
ada, life  tenure  independent  of  politics  has  led  to 
independence.  The  appointments  being  for  life  guar- 
antees that  many  of  the  incumbents  are  not  young, 
and  this  imparts  to  the  Upper  House  that  quality  of 
the  Witenagemot  most  valued  by  the  ancient  Saxons 
— ^the  council  of  the  aged  and  the  experienced  and  the 
wise. 

Active,  aggressive  power,  of  course,  resides  chiefly 
with  the  Commons.  Representation  here  is  arranged 
according  to  the  population  and  must  be  readjusted 
after  every  census.  "Rep.  by  Pop."  was  the  rallying 
cry  that  effected  this  arrangement.  No  property 
qualification  is  required  from  the  member  of  the  House 
of  Commons,  but  he  must  be  a  British  subject.  He 
must  not  have  been  convicted  of  any  crime,  minor  or 
major. 

Franchise  in  Canada  is  practically  universal  suf- 


HOW   GOVERNED  233 

frage.  At  least  it  amounts  to  that.  Voters  must  be 
registered.  They  must  be  British  subjects.  They 
must  be  twenty-one  years  of  age.  They  must  not  be 
insane,  idiots  or  convicts.  They  must  own  real  prop- 
erty to  the  value  of  three  hundred  dollars  in  cities, 
two  hundred  dollars  in  towns,  one  hundred  and  fifty 
dollars  in  the  country;  or  they  must  have  a  yearly 
income  of  three  hundred  dollars.  A  farmer's  son  has 
the  right  to  vote  without  these  qualifications,  evi- 
dently on  the  ancient  Saxon  presumption  that  a  free- 
holder represents  more  vitally  the  interests  of  a  coun- 
try than  the  penniless  floater,  who  neither  works  nor 
earns.  In  other  words,  the  carpet-bag  voter  does  not 
yet  play  any  part  in  Canadian  politics.  Bad  as  the 
corruption  is  in  some  cases  among  the  foreigners, 
when  votes  are  bought  at  two  dollars  to  five  dollars, 
the  point  has  not  yet  been  reached  when  a  carpet- 
bag gang  of  boarding-house  floaters  and  saloon 
heelers  can  be  transferred  from  a  secure  ward  to  a 
doubtful  ward  and  so  submerge  the  political  rights  of 
permanent  residents. 

Judges  can  not  vote  in  Canada.  In  fact,  they  can 
take  no  part,  direct  or  indirect,  by  influence  or  speech, 
in  politics.  This  was  one  of  the  things  fought  out 
in  the  '37  Rebellion  and  forever  settled.  Canada 
could  not  conceive  of  a  man  who  had  been  a  judge 
being  nominated  for  the  premiership  or  as  Governor. 
Of  course,  when  Liberals  are  in  power,  as  advisers  of 


234     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

the  Governor-General,  they  recommend  more  Liberals 
for  judgeships  than  Conservatives;  and  when  Con- 
servatives are  in  power,  they  recommend  for  judge- 
ships more  Conservatives  than  Liberals.  I  think  of 
attorneys  who  were  penniless  strugglers  in  the  Liberal 
ranks  of  my  childhood  days  in  Winnipeg  who  are 
to-day  dignified  judges;  and  I  think  of  other  attor- 
neys, who  were  penniless  strugglers  in  Conservative 
ranks  who  have  been  advanced  under  the  Borden  re- 
gime to  judgeships;  but  the  point  is,  having  been  so 
advanced,  they  pass  a  chasm  which  they  can  never 
retrace  without  impeachment — the  chasm  is  party 
politics.  They  are  independent  of  popular  favor. 
They  can  be  impeached  and  displaced.  They  are  for- 
ever disgraced  by  defalcation  in  office.  By  observ- 
ing the  duties  of  office,  they  are  secure  for  life  and 
held  in  an  esteem  second  only  to  that  of  the  Governor- 
General. 

You  will  notice  that  it  Is  all  more  a  matter  of  public 
sentiment  than  a  law ;  of  custom  than  of  court.  That 
is  what  I  mean  when  I  say  that  Canada's  constitution 
is  a  vital,  living,  growing  thing,  not  a  dead  formula 
by  which  the  Past  binds  and  impedes  the  Present  and 
the  Future. 

There  must  be  a  session  of  the  Dominion  Parlia- 
ment once  every  year.  Five  years  is  the  limit  of  any 
tenure  of  office  by  the  Commons.  Every  five  years 
the  Commoners  must  go  to  the  country  for  reelection. 


HOW   GOVERNED  235 

Usually  the  government  in  power  goes  to  the  country 
for  reendorsement  before  the  term  of  Parliament  ex- 
pires. 

Laws  on  corrupt  practices  are  very  strict  and  what 
is  more — they  are  generally  enforced.  The  slightest 
profit,  direct  or  indirect  of  a  member,  vacates  his  seat. 
Corruption  on  the  part  of  underlings,  of  which  they 
have  known  nothing,  vacates  an  election.  A  member 
of  Parliament  can  not  participate  directly  or  indi- 
rectly in  any  public  work  benefiting  his  district.  He 
is  not  in  it  for  what  he  can  get  out  of  it.  He  is  in  it 
for  what  he  can  give  to  it.  Expenses  of  election  to  a 
postage  stamp  must  be  published  after  election. 

The  methods  of  conducting  business  in  Parliament 
need  not  be  discussed  here,  except  to  say  that  any 
member  can  introduce  a  bill,  any  member  can  present 
a  petition  from  the  humblest  inhabitant  of  the  com- 
monwealth, and  any  member  can  speak  on  a  motion 
provided  he  gains  the  floor  first. 

Judges  are  appointed  and  paid  by  the  Dominion 
government,  not  by  the  provincial.  Decisions  by 
provincial  judges — appointed  by  the  Dominion  gov- 
ernment— can  be  appealed  to  a  Supreme  Court  of 
Canada.  Judges  can  be  removed  only  on  petition  to 
the  Governor-General  for  misbehavior. 

Dominion  taxes  in  Canada  are  indirect — on  imports. 
As  stated  elsewhere,  the  main  power  in  Canada  is 
vested  in  federal  authorities.     Only  local  affairs — 


2S6    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

education,  excise,  municipal  matters,  drainage,  local 
railroads,  etc. — are  left  to  the  provinces. 

Every  man  in  Canada  is  supposed  to  be  liable  for 
military  training  if  called  on,  but  the  number  of  men 
annually  drilled  is  about  fifty  thousand.  Hitherto  a 
man  appointed  from  the  Imperial  Forces  has  been  the 
commanding  general  in  Canada.  It  need  scarcely  be 
said  that  if  Canada  is  to  hold  her  own  in  Imperial 
plans,  if  she  is  to  become  a  power  in  the  struggle  for 
ascendency  on  the  Pacific,  her  equipment  both  as  to 
land  forces  and  marine  are  ridiculously  inadequate. 
They  are  the  equipment  of  a  member  in  Imperial 
plans  who  is  skulking  his  share. 

Provincial  courts  are,  of  course,  administered  by 
provincial  officers ;  but  these  are  appointed  by  the 
Governor-General  advised  by  the  Cabinet  of  the  fed- 
eral party  in  power.  The  Lieutenant-Governor  of  the 
province  is  appointed  by  the  Governor-General  ad- 
vised by  the  party  in  power.  He  is  paid  by  the  Do- 
minion. Judges  of  superior  courts  must  be  barristers 
of  ten  years'  good  standing  at  the  bar  of  their  prov- 
inces. All  judges  and  justices  of  the  peace  must  have 
some  property  qualification.  Rascals  with  criminal 
records  are  not  railroaded  into  judgeships  in  Canada. 
I  know  of  a  judge  in  San  Francisco  who  until  the 
advent  of  the  woman  vote  literally  held  his  position 
by  reason  of  his  alliance  with  the  white  slavers.  I 
know  of  another  judge  in  New  York  who  held  his 


HOW   GO^^RNED  2S? 

position  in  spite  of  a  criminal  record  by  reason  of  the 
fact  he  could  get  himself  elected  by  the  disreputable 
gangs.  These  things  are  virtually  impossible  under 
the  Canadian  system.  In  the  future  the  system  may 
prove  too  rigid.  At  the  present  time  it  works  and 
keeps  the  courts  clear  of  political  influence. 

Juries  are  not  so  universal  in  Canada  as  in  the 
United  States.  In  civil  cases,  where  the  points  of  law 
are  complicated,  the  tendency  is  to  let  the  judge  guide 
the  verdict  of  the  court. 


m 


There  is  one  feature  of  Canadian  justice  which 
sentimentalists  deplore.  It  is  that  the  lash  is  still 
used  for  crimes  of  violence  against  the  person  and 
for  bestiality.  This  is  not  a  relic  of  barbarism.  It  is 
the  result  of  careful  thought  on  the  part  of  the  De- 
partment of  Justice — the  thought  being  that  it  is  use- 
less to  speak  to  a  man  capable  of  bestiality  in  terms 
not  articulate  to  his  nature ;  and  the  fact  remains  that 
criminals  of  this  class  seldom  come  back  for  second 
terms  of  punishment  for  the  same  sort  of  crimes. 

If  you  ask  why  few  homicides  are  punished  in  the 
United  States,  and  few  escape  in  Canada — I  can  not 
answer.  Political  expediency,  party  heelers,  techni- 
calities— ^the  dotting  of  an  i,  the  crossing  of  a  t,  the 
omission  of  a  comma — ^have  no  effect  whatsoever  on 


238     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

Canadian  justice.  The  courts  are  never  defied,  and 
the  law  takes  its  course. 

The  law  not  only  takes  its  course  relentlessly  but 
the  pursuit  of  crime  literally  never  desists.  This 
feature  of  Canadian  justice  is  a  rude  sharp  shock  to 
the  unruly  element  pouring  in  with  the  new  colonists. 
A  Montana  gunman  blew  into  a  Canadian  frontier 
town  and  in  accordance  with  custom  began  "to  shoot 
up"  the  bar  rooms.  In  twenty-four  hours  he  awak- 
ened from  his  spree  under  sentence  of  sixty  days' 
hard  labor.  "Let  me  out  of  this  blamed  Can-a-day," 
he  cursed.  "Who'd  'a'  thought  of  takin'  any  offense 
from  touchin'  up  this  blamed  dead  town .?" 

A  Texas  outlaw  succeeded  in  inducing  a  young 
Englishman  of  the  verdantly  bumptious  and  moneyed 
sort  to  go  homestead  hunting  with  him.  The  Indians 
saw  the  two  ride  into  the  back  country.  In  spring 
only  the  Texan  came  out.  I  forget  what  his  explana- 
tion of  the  Englishman's  disappearance  was.  In  any 
other  country  under  the  sun,  who  would  have  ridden 
two  hundred  miles  beyond  nowhere  to  investigate  the 
story  of  an  outlaw  about  a  young  fool,  who  had 
plainly  been  a  candidate  for  trouble .''  But  an  old 
Indian  chief  meandered  into  the  barracks  of  the  near- 
est Mounted  Police  station,  sat  him  down  on  the  floor 
and  after  smoking  countless  pipes  let  drop  the  fact 
that  two  settlers  had  "gone  in"  and  only  "one  man 
—he  come  out."    That  was  enough.     Two  policemen 


HOW    GOVERNED  239 

were  detailed  on  the  case.  They  rode  to  the  aban- 
doned homesteads.  In  the  deserted  log  cabin  nothing 
seemed  amiss,  but  some  distance  away  on  a  bluiF  a 
stained  ax  was  found ;  yet  farther  away  a  mound  not 
a  year  old.  Beneath  it  the  remains  of  the  English- 
man were  found  with  ax  hacks  in  the  skull.  It  was 
now  a  year  since  the  commission  of  the  crime  and  the 
murderer  was  by  this  far  enough  away.  Why  put 
the  country  to  the  expense  of  trailing  down  a  criminal 
who  had  decamped?  Those  two  young  Mounted  Po- 
licemen were  told  to  find  the  criminal  and  not  come 
back  till  they  had  found  him.  They  trailed  him  from 
Alberta  to  Montana,  from  Montana  to  the  Orient, 
from  China  back  to  Texas,  where  he  was  found  on  a 
homestead  of  his  own.  Now  the  proof  of  murder  was 
of  the  most  tenuous  sort.  One  of  the  Mounted  Police- 
men disguised  himself  as  a  laborer  and  obtained  work 
on  an  adjoining  homestead.  It  took  two  years  to 
gain  the  criminal's  confidence  and  confession.  The 
man  was  arrested  and  extradited  to  Canada.  If  I 
remember  rightly,  the  trial  did  not  last  a  week,  and  the 
murderer  was  hanged  forthwith. 

Instances  of  this  kind  could  be  retailed  without 
number,  but  this  one  case  is  typical.  It  is  something 
more  than  relentlessness.  It  is  more  than  keeping 
politics  out  of  the  courts.  It  is  a  tacit  national  recog- 
nition of  two  basic  truths :  that  the  protection  of  in- 
nocence is  the  business  of  the  courts  more  than  the 


240     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

protection  of  guilt ;  that  having  delegated  to  the  De- 
partment of  Justice  the  enforcement  of  criminal  law, 
Canada  holds  that  Department  of  Justice  responsible 
for  every  infraction  of  law.  The  enforcement  is 
greatly  aided  by  the  fact  that  criminal  law  in  Canada 
is  under  federal  jurisdiction.  An  embezzler  can  not 
defalcate  in  Nova  Scotia,  lightly  skip  into  Manitoba 
and  put  both  provinces  to  expense  and  technical 
trouble  apprehending  him.  In  the  States  I  once  was 
annoyed  by  a  semi-demented  blackmailer.  When  I 
sent  for  the  sheriff — whose  deputy,  by  the  way,  hid 
when  summoned — the  lunatic  stepped  across  the  state 
border,  and  it  would  have  cost  me  two  hundred  dollars 
to  have  apprehended  him.  As  the  culprit  was  a  men- 
ace more  to  the  community  than  to  me,  I  went  on  west 
on  a  trip  to  a  remote  part  of  Alberta.  I  had  not  been 
in  Alberta  twenty-four  hours  before  the  chief  con- 
stable called  to  know  if  this  blackmailer  of  whom  he 
had  read  In  the  press,  could  be  apprehended  in  Can- 
ada. The  why  of  this  vigilance  on  one  side  of  the 
line  and  remissness  on  the  other,  I  can  no  more  ex- 
plain than  why  American  industrial  progress  is  so 
amazingly  swift  and  Canadian  industrial  progress  is 
so  amazingly  slow. 

There  is  very  little  wish-washy  coddling  of  the 
criminal  in  Canada.  While  in  the  penitentiary  he  is 
cared  for  physically,  mentally  and  spiritually.  When 
released,  he  is  helped  to  start  life  afresh;  but  if  he 


HOW   GOVERNED  241 

keeps  falling  and  falling,  he  is  put  where  he  will  not 
propagate  his  species  and  hurt  others  in  his  back- 
sliding. 

"I  regret,"  said  a  judge  in  a  Winnipeg  court,  "to 
sentence  such  a  youthful  offender."  The  prisoner  was 
a  young  foreigner  who  attacked  another  man  viciously 
in  a  drunken  brawl.  *'But  foreigners  must  learn  that 
Canadian  law  can  not  be  broken  with  impunity,"  and 
he  sent  the  young  man  to  what  was  practically  a  life 
sentence. 

"Hard  on  the  poor  devil,"  said  a  court  attendant. 

**Yes,"  retorted  a  westerner  who  lived  in  the  for- 
eign settlement,  "but  it's  an  all-fired  good  thing  for 
Canada." 

The  case  of  a  judge  in  British  Columbia  is  famous 
on  the  Pacific  Coast.  It  was  in  the  old  days  of  murder 
and  robbery  on  the  trail  to  the  gold  diggings  of  Cari- 
boo. In  the  face  of  the  plainest  evidence  the  jury  had 
refused  to  convict.  The  astounded  judge  turned  amid 
tense  silence  in  fury  on  the  prisoner. 

"The  jury  pronounces  the  prisoner  not  guilty,"  he 
said,  "and  I  strongly  recommend  him  to  go  out  and 
cut  their  throats." 

Reference  has  been  made  to  an  Imperial  court  offi- 
cial assassinated  by  an  angry  Hindu  conspirator  in  a 
Vancouver  court  room.  The  assassin  was  sentenced  to 
death  nine  days  from  the  commission  of  the  crime,  and 
if  any  newspaper  had  attempted  to  make  a  head-line 


242    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

affair  out  of  it,  or  "to  try  the  jury"  for  trying  the 
prisoner,  the  editors  and  owners  of  that  paper  would 
have  been  sent  to  jail  for  contempt. 


IV 


The  gradual  rise  of  the  two  political  parties  dates 
from  the  adoption  of  a  high  tariff  by  the  Conserva- 
tives after  confederation.  Prior  to  1837  Canadian 
parties  consisted  simply  of  the  Outs  and  the  Ins.  The 
advanced  Radicals,  who  formed  themselves  into  a 
party  to  oust  the  Family  Compact,  called  themselves 
Liberals.  The  entrenched  oligarchy  called  themselves 
Conservatives.  After  confederation,  by  force  of  cir- 
cumstances, namely  the  refusal  of  tariff  concessions 
from  the  United  States,  the  Conservatives,  who  were  in 
power,  became  the  high  tariff  party.  The  Liberals, 
when  out  of  power,  advocated  tariff  for  revenue  only. 
Also  by  force  of  circumstances  until  the  transfer  of 
the  balance  of  power  from  Quebec  to  the  New  West, 
the  party  in  office  had  a  tendency  to  play  for  the 
French  Catholic  vote  of  Quebec ;  the  party  out  of  of- 
fice coquetted  with  the  ultra-Protestant  vote  of  On- 
tario. This  naturally  worked  toward  the  provincial 
governments  being  Liberal,  when  the  federal  govern- 
ment was  Conservative;  and  vice  versa.  The  Liberal 
in  provincial  politics  was  Liberal  in  federal  politics, 


HOW   GOVERNED  243 

and  the  Conservative  in  federal  politics  was  Conserva- 
tive in  provincial  politics;  but  the  policy  has  always 
been  for  the  Outs  first  to  attack  the  Ins  provincially — 
to  win  the  outposts  before  attacking  the  entrenched 
power  of  the  federal  government.  Before  Sir  John 
Macdonald's  Conservative  administration  was  de- 
feated there  was  a  long  series  of  victories  by  the  Lib- 
erals in  the  provinces,  and  before  Sir  Wilfred  Lau- 
rier's  Liberal  government  was  defeated  the  Conserva- 
tives had  captured  the  most  of  the  provincial  govern- 
ments. With  the  Conservatives  professing  high  tariff 
as  economic  salvation  and  the  Liberals  regarding  high 
tariff  as  economic  damnation,  it  seems  almost  heresy 
to  set  down  that  the  line  of  demarkation  between  the 
two  great  parties  in  practice  is  really  one  of  Outs  and 
Ins.  The  only  tariff  reductions  made  by  the  Liberals 
were  on  British  imports,  and  this  did  not  lower  the 
average  on  British  imports  to  the  level  of  the  average 
duty  on  American  imports ;  when  the  high  tariff  Con- 
servatives came  back  to  power,  the  duties  were  not 
shoved  to  higher  levels.  This,  too,  has  all  been  by 
force  of  circumstances.  When  both  parties  would  have 
grasped  eagerly  at  tariff  reductions  from  the  United 
States,  those  concessions  could  not  be  obtained.  When 
the  tariff  concessions  were  offered,  Canada  had  already 
built  up  such  intrenched  interests  of  her  own  in  fac- 
tory, mill  and  transportation  that  she  was  not  in  a 


244>    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

position  to  accept  the  offer.  Laurier  did  not  see  this, 
but  many  of  his  party  did  and  refused  to  support  him 
in  reciprocity. 

At  time  of  writing,  to  an  outsider,  there  is  in  prac- 
tice no  difference  between  the  two  parties ;  but  this  can 
hardly  remain  a  permanent  condition.  As  long  as  the 
war  lasts  both  parties  will  be  a  unit  in  support  of  Im- 
perial defense.  The  day  the  war  is  over  Canada  may 
have  to  consider,  not  Imperial,  but  Dominion  defense ; 
and  this  is  bound  to  split  the  parties  up  on  entirely 
new  lines.  The  French  Nationalists  are  for  standing 
aside  from  all  European  entanglements  and  resting 
secure  under  the  Monroe  Doctrine.  The  two  million 
Americans  in  the  West  may  be  expected  to  advocate 
the  same  policy.  The  British  and  the  Canadians  of 
British  descent  in  Canada  may  be  expected  to  take  an 
aggressive  stand  for  active  self-defense;  for  defense 
may  be  one  of  Canada's  next  big  problems. 

Up  to  the  present,  Canadians  have  considered  it  a 
superiority  that  their  constitution — the  British  North 
America  Act — could  be  so  easily  amended.  As  long  as 
Canada  is  peopled  by  Canadians,  it  is  an  advantage  to 
work  under  a  constitution  that  may  be  modified  to  suit 
the  growing  need  of  a  growing  nation,  but  one  is  con- 
strained to  ask  what  if  Galicians  and  Germans  ever  ac- 
quired the  balance  of  voting  power  in  Canada?  There 
are  half  as  many  German-born  Germans  in  the  United 
States  as  there  are  native-born  Canadians  in  Canada. 


HOW   GOVERNED  245 

What  if  such  a  tide  of  German  immigration  came  to 
Canada?  Would  it  be  an  advantage  or  a  disadvantage 
that  the  country's  constitution  could  be  so  easily 
amended  by  the  Imperial  Parliament?  Or  more  strik- 
ing still,  suppose  the  Hindu,  a  British  subject,  began 
peopling  Western  Canada  by  the  million.  Suppose 
the  Hindu,  a  British  subject,  voted  in  Canada  for  a 
change  in  the  constitution !  Can  one  conceive  for  one 
minute  of  the  Imperial  government  refusing  to  amend 
the  British  North  American  Act?  Canadians  some- 
times refer  to  the  American  Constitution  as  too  fixed 
and  inelastic  for  modern  conditions.  They  some- 
times wonder  how  certain  famous  constitutional  law- 
yers could  make  a  living  without  the  American  Con- 
stitution to  interpret  and  argue  before  the  Supreme 
Court,  but  Americans  and  Canadians  are  to-day  work- 
ing out  from  different  angles  a  great  world  experi- 
ment in  self-government.  It  remains  to  be  seen  which 
experiment  will  stand  the  stress  of  world-convulsing 
changes.    We  need  not  theorize.    Time  will  arbitrate. 


CHAPTER  XrV 

THE  LIFE  OF  THE  PEOPLE 
I 

Some  one  has  said  that  the  life  of  a  nation  is  but 
the  shadow  of  the  units  composing  it ;  or  the  Hf e  of  a 
nation  is  but  the  replica  of  the  life  of  the  individuals 
in  it.  Massed  figures  on  gross  exports  are  but  the 
total  thrift  of  a  multitude  of  toiling  men.  Wheat  pro- 
duction to  feed  a  hungry  empire  is  but  one  farmer's 
tireless  vigilance  multiplied  by  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  other  farmers.  What  manner  of  man  is  the  Cana- 
dian behind  all  these  figures  attesting  material  pros- 
perity? What  manner  of  being  is  the  Canadian 
woman,  his  partner  .J*  Is  the  Canadian  a  Socialist,  or 
an  Individualist?  Does  he  believe  that  each  man 
should  stand  upon  his  own  feet  or  lean  upon  a  state 
crutch?  There  is  no  state  church  in  Canada.  Then, 
what  part  does  religion  play?  Is  it  a  shadow,  or  a 
substance?  Is  it  a  refuge  for  the  unfit  and  the  weak 
to  shift  the  responsibility  for  their  own  failure  to  the 
fatalism  of  the  will  of  God;  or  is  religion  a  terrible 
and  dynamic  force  that  compels  right  for  right's  sake 

£46 


THE    LIFE    OF    THE    PEOPLE        247 

independent  of  compromise?  How  does  the  Canadian 
live  in  his  home?  Is  he  beer-drinking,  lethargic, 
dreamy  and  flabby  in  will  power;  or  is  he  whisky- 
drinking,  fiery,  practical  and  pugnacious?  Why 
hasn't  he  a  distinctive  literature,  a  distinctive  art? 
Nature  never  was  more  lavish  to  any  people  in  beauti- 
ful landscape  from  the  quiet  rural  scenery  of  the 
maritime  provinces,  Quebec  and  Ontario,  to  the  far- 
flung  epic  of  the  fenceless  prairies  and  the  Homeric 
grandeur  of  the  mountains.  Why  are  quiet  rural 
beauty  and  illimitable  freedom  and  lofty  splendor  not 
reflected  in  poem  and  novel  and  ballad  and  picture? 
The  Canadian  may  answer — We  go  in  more  for  ath- 
letics than  aesthetics :  we  are  living  literature,  not  writ- 
ing it.  In  our  snow-covered  prairies  edged  by  the  vio- 
let mist,  lined  in  silver  and  pricked  at  night  by  the 
diamond  light  of  a  million  stars,  we  are  living  art,  not 
painting  it.  That  our  mountains  are  dumb  and  inar- 
ticulate, that  our  forests  chant  the  litany  of  the  pines 
untranslated  to  the  winds  of  heaven,  and  that  our 
cataracts  thunder  their  diapasons  inimitable  to  art — 
is  no  proof  that  though  we  are  dumb  and  inarticulate, 
we  are  not  lifted  and  transported  and  inspired  by  the 
wondrous  beauties  of  the  heritage  God  has  given  us. 
The  Canadian  may  say  this  theoretically,  but  is  he 
strengthened  in  body  and  made  greater  in  soul  by  the 
mystic  splendors  of  his  country?  In  a  word,  has  the 
Canadian  found  himself?    He  is  not  self-conscious,  if 


248    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

that  be  what  is  meant  by  finding  self;  and  that  may 
be  a  good  thing ;  for  self-consciousness  is  of  one  of  two 
things — the  vanity  of  femininity  in  its  adolescence,  or 
the  picayune  pecking  introspection  of  natures  thrown 
in  on  self  instead  of  exuberantly  spending  energy  in 
effort  outside  of  self.  Self -consciousness  is  too  much 
ego,  whether  it  be  old  or  young ;  and  the  devil  must  be 
cast  out  into  the  swine  over  the  cliff  into  the  sea,  before 
there  can  enter  into  men,  or  nations,  that  Spirit  of 
God  which  makes  for  great  service  in  Destiny. 
Has  Canada  found  herself? 


n 


Without  any  brief  for  or  against  Socialism  as  a 
system,  it  may  be  said  that  for  many  years  Socialism 
will  play  little  part  in  Canadian  affairs.  In  areas  like 
Germany,  where  the  population  is  three  hundred  and 
ten  per  square  mile;  or  France,  where  the  population 
is  one  hundred  and  eighty-nine  per  square  mile;  or 
England,  where  the  population  is  over  five  hundred 
per  square  mile;  or  Saxony,  where  the  population  is 
eight  hundred  and  thirty  per  square  mile — one  can 
understand  the  claim  of  the  most  rabid  and  extreme 
Socialist  that  the  great  proportion  of  the  people  can 
never  by  any  chance  own  their  own  freehold;  that 
the  great  proportion  of  the  toilers  are  not  having 
a  fair  chance  in  an  open  field;  but  in  Canada  where 


THE    LIFE    OF    THE    PEOPLE        249 

there  are  millions  of  acres  untaken,  where  the  popu- 
lation is  not  quite  two  to  the  square  mile,  it  is 
impossible  to  raise  the  cry  that  every  man,  and 
any  man,  can  not  have  all  the  freehold  he  is 
manly  enough  to  go  out  and  take.  The  grievance  be- 
comes preposterous  and  a  joke.  There  is  more  land 
uninhabited  and  open  to  preemption  in  Canada  than  is 
owned  in  freehold.  There  are  more  forests  standing 
in  Canada  than  have  been  cut.  There  are  more  mines 
than  there  are  workmen,  and  only  the  edge  of  Canada's 
mineral  lands  have  been  explored.  There  are  more 
fish  uncaught  than  have  ever  been  hooked.  I  have 
heard  soap-box  orators  in  Canada  rant  about  the  plu- 
tocrats gobbling  the  resources  of  the  country;  and  I 
have  gone  to  their  offices  and  shown  them  on  the  map 
that  any  man  could  become  a  plutocrat  by  going  out 
and  gobbling  some  more,  provided  he  had  brains  and 
brawn  and  gobbled  hard  enough  instead  of  gabbled; 
and  I  have  been  answered  these  very  words :  "But  we 
don't  want  that.  We  want  to  inflame  the  masses  with 
hatred  for  the  classes  so  that  the  laborer  will  take  over 
all  industry."  When  I  have  pointed  out  that  there  are 
"no  masses"  nor  "classes"  in  Canada — that  all  are 
laborers,  I  have  been  met  with  a  blank  stare. 

The  case  is  a  standing  joke  in  one  province  of  a 
man  who  as  an  agitator  used  to  rave  at  "the  British 
flag  as  a  bloody  rag."  The  police  were  never  quite 
sure  whether  to  arrest  him  for  treason  or  let  him  blow 


250     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

off  steam  and  exhaust.  They  wisely  chose  the  latter 
course.  Prosperity  came  to  the  town.  The  man  sold 
his  small  bit  of  real  estate  for  something  under  a  hun- 
dred thousand.  He  didn't  stay  to  divide  his  unearned 
increment  among  his  fellow  agitators.  He  hied  him 
to  retire  to  the  land  where  "the  flag  was  a  bloody 
rag."  This,  of  course,  proves  nothing  for  or  against 
Socialism  as  a  system.  There  was  a  Judas  among  the 
apostles ;  but  it  illustrates  the  point  that  Canada  is 
still  at  the  stage  where  every  man  may  become  a  cap- 
italist, a  vested  righter,  the  owner  of  his  own  free- 
hold. When  every  man  may  have  a  vested  property 
right  in  a  country — not  as  a  gift  but  as  the  reward 
of  his  own  effort  in  a  fair  field  with  no  favors — it  is 
a  fairly  safe  prophecy  that  the  vested  rights  earned 
and  held  by  the  fit  and  the  strong  will  never  be  handed 
over  as  a  gift  to  the  unfit  and  the  weak  and  the  don't- 
trys.  The  savings  of  the  man  who  has  not  squandered 
his  earnings  on  saloons  and  reckless  living  will  never  be 
taxed  to  support  in  idleness — even  an  idle  old  age — 
the  feckless  who  have  spent  on  stomach  and  lust  what 
other  men  save.  Sounds  hard;  doesn't  it,  in  the  face 
of  almost  universal  nostrums  for  the  salvation  and 
propagation  of  the  useless?  But  it  is  like  Canada's 
climate.  Perhaps  the  climate  has  a  good  deal  to  do 
with  it.  Hard  it  may  be;  but  the  issue  is  clean-cut 
and  crystal  clear — work,  or  starve ;  be  fit,  or  die ;  make 
good,  or  drop  out ;  here  is  a  fair  field  and  no  favors ! 


THE    LIFE    OF    THE    PEOPLE        251 

Gird  yourself  as  a  man  to  it,  and  no  puling  puny 
whining  for  pity! 

Can  Canada  keep  a  fair  field  and  no  favors?  Her 
destiny  as  a  power  depends  on  the  answer  to  that 
question.  In  every  city  in  Canada  to-day  are  grow- 
ing up  crowded  foreign  quarters  peopled  by  men  and 
women  who  have  never  had  a  fair  field — with  class 
hate  in  their  hearts  for  inherited  social  wrongs ;  dere- 
licts, no-goods,  unfits,  born  unfit  through  no  fault  of 
their  own.  Have  they  no  claim.'*  Can  Canada  as  a 
foster  mother  redeem  such  as  these.''  Her  destiny  as 
a  power  depends  on  the  answer  to  this  question,  too. 
These  people  are  coming  to  her.  In  every  city  are 
tens  of  thousands  of  them.  She  needs  these  people. 
They  need  her.  Will  it  be  a  leveling  down  process 
for  Canada  or  a  leveling  up  process  for  them?  Be- 
fore the  nineties  the  average  number  of  inhabitants 
per  house  in  urban  Canada  was  three.  By  1901  the 
average  was  up  to  four.  By  1911  it  was  up  to  five. 
In  the  crowded  centers  as  many  as  twenty  a  room  have 
been  found.  If  this  sort  of  thing  continue  and  in- 
crease. Socialism  will  become  a  factor  in  Canada.  It 
will  become  a  factor  because  every  man  or  woman 
who  has  not  had  a  fair  chance  has  a  right  to  demand 
a  change  to  a  system  that  will  give  a  fair  chance, 
Canada's  economic  stability  and  freedom  from  social 
unrest  will  depend  on  getting  her  foreign  denizens 
put  to  the  land,     Unfortunately  high  tariff  fosters 


252     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

factory;  and  factory  fosters  cheap  foreign  labor; 
and  cheap  foreign  labor  as  inevitably  leads  to  social 
ferment  as  heat  sours  milk. 


in 


What  part  does  religion  play  in  Canada?  In 
marked  distinction  to  the  United  Kingdom  and  the 
United  States,  Canada  is  a  church-going  nation.  You 
hear  a  great  deal  of  the  orthodoxy  of  the  Britisher; 
but  if  you  go  to  England  and  go  to  his  church,  even 
to  a  festal  service  such  as  Christmas,  you  will  find  that 
he  leaves  the  orthodoxy  mostly  to  the  clergy  and  the 
women.  I  have  again  and  again  seen  the  pews  of  the 
most  famous  churches  in  England  with  barely  a  scat- 
tering of  auditors  in  them.  Of  churches  where  the 
hard-working  manual  toiler  may  be  found  side  by  side 
with  the  cultured  and  the  idle  and  the  leisured — ^there 
is  none.  You  also  hear  a  great  deal  about  the  heter- 
odoxy of  the  American ;  but  if  you  go  to  his  church 
— ^with  the  exception  of  the  Catholic — ^you  find  that 
he,  too,  is  leaving  his  heterodoxy  to  the  clergy  and 
the  women.  A  few  years  ago  it  was  almost  impossible 
to  gain  entrance  to  a  metropolitan  church  in  the 
United  States,  where  the  preacher  happened  to  be  a 
man  of  ability  or  fame.  Try  it  to-day!  Though 
church  music  has  been  improved  almost  to  the  excel- 
lence of  oratorios  or  grand  opera,  unless   it  be  a 


THE   LIFE    OF   THE   PEOPLE       «53 

festal  service  like  Easter  or  Christmas,  the  pews  are 
only  sparsely  fiUed.  I  do  not  think  I  am  exaggerat- 
ing when  I  say  this  Is  as  true  of  the  country  districts 
as  of  the  city.  All  through  New  England  are  count- 
less country  churches  that  have  had  to  be  permanently 
closed  for  lack  of  attendance.  But  between  the 
churches  of  the  United  Kingdom  and  the  United 
States  is  a  marked  difference — it  is  the  air  of  the 
preacher.  The  Englishman  is  positively  sublime  in 
his  unconsciousness  of  the  fact  that  he  had  lost  a  grip 
of  his  people.  The  American  knows  and  does  not 
blink  the  fact  and  is  frantically  endeavoring  by  so- 
cial service,  by  popular  lectures,  by  music,  by  current 
topics,  by  vehement  eloquence  to  regain  the  grip  of 
his  people;  and  it  must  cut  a  live  manly  man  to  the 
quick  to  know  that  his  best  efforts  on  salvation  are 
too  often  expended  on  dear  old  saintly  ladies,  who 
could  not  be  damned  If  they  tried. 

Now  the  curious  thing  about  Canada,  which  I  don't 
attempt  In  the  least  to  explain,  is  this:  whether  the 
preacher  pules,  or  whines,  or  moons,  or  shouts  to  the 
rafters,  or  is  gifted  with  the  eloquence  to  touch  "the 
quick  and  the  dead";  whether  the  music  be  a  sym- 
phony or  a  dolorous  horror  of  discords ;  whether  there 
be  social  service  or  old-fashioned  theology ;  whether, 
in  fact,  the  preacher  be  some  raw  ignorant  stripling 
from  the  theological  seminary,  or  a  man  of  divine  in- 
spiration and  power — whatever  Is  or  Is  not.  If  the 


254.     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

church  is  a  church,  from  Halifax  to  Vancouver,  you 
find  it  full.  I  have  no  explanation  of  this  fact.  I  set 
it  down.  Canadians  are  a  vigorously  virile  people  in 
their  church-going.  They  do  it  with  all  their  might. 
I  sometimes  think  that  the  church  does  for  Canada 
what  music  does  for  continental  nations,  what  dollar- 
chasing  and  amusement  do  for  the  American  nation 
— opens  that  great  emotional  outlet  for  the  play  of 
spiritual  powers  and  idealization,  which  we  must  all 
have  if  we  would  rise  above  the  gin-horse  haltered  to 
the  wheel  of  toil.  "The  Happy  Warrior"  in  Watts' 
picture  dreamed  of  the  spirit  face  above  him  in  his 
sleep.  So  may  Canada  dream  in  her  tireless  urgent 
business  of  nation-making ;  and  religion  may  visualize 
that  dream  through  the  church. 

Understand — ^the  Canadian  is  no  more  religious 
than  the  American  or  the  Britisher.  He  drinks  as 
much  whisky  as  they  do  light  wines  and  beer.  He 
"cusses"  in  the  same  unholy  vernacular,  only  more 
vigorously.  He  strikes  back  as  quickly.  He  hits  as 
hard.  He  gives  his  enemy  one  cheek  and  then  the 
other,  and  then  both  feet  and  fists ;  but  the  Canadian 
goes  to  church.  One  of  the  most  amazing  sights  of 
the  new  frontier  cities  is  to  see  a  church  debouching 
of  a  Sunday  night.  The  people  come  out  in  black 
floods.  In  one  foreign  church  in  Winnipeg  is  a  mem- 
bership of  four  thousand.  I  think  of  a  little  indus- 
trial city  of  Ontario  where  there  is  a  church — one  of 


THE    LIFE    OF    THE    PEOPLE        S55 

three — with  a  larger  membership  than  any  single 
church  in  the  city  of  New  York. 

Canadians  not  only  go  to  church  but  they  dig  down 
in  their  pockets  for  the  church.  In  little  frontier  cities 
of  the  West  more  is  being  spent  on  magnificent  tem- 
ples of  worship  than  has  been  spent  on  some  European 
cathedrals.  Granted  the  effects  are  sometimes  garish 
and  squarish  and  dollar-loud.  This  is  not  an  age 
when  artisans  spend  a  lifetime  carving  a  single  door 
or  a  single  facade ;  but  when  a  little  place — of  say 
seventeen  thousand  people — spends  one  hundred  thou- 
sand dollars  on  a  church,  somebody  has  laid  down 
the  cash;  and  the  Canadian  is  not  a  man  who 
spends  his  cash  for  no  worth.  That  cash  rep- 
resents something  for  which  he  cares  almightily 
in  Canadian  life.  What  is  it.?  Frankly  I  do  not 
know,  but  I  think  it  is  that  the  church  visualizes  Can- 
ada's ideal  in  a  vision.  We  love  and  lose  and  reach 
forward  to  the  last.  Where?  We  toil  and  strive  and 
attain.  To  what  end?  Our  successes  fail,  and  our 
failures  succeed.  Why?  And  love  lights  the  daily 
path.  But  where  to?  Religion  helps  to  visualize  the 
answers  to  those  questions  for  Canada. 

Another  characteristic  about  religion  in  Canada, 
which  is  very  remarkable  in  an  era  of  decadence  in  be- 
lief, is  that  the  church  is  a  man's  job.  Unless  in  some 
of  the  little  semi-deserted  hamlets  in  the  far  East,  you 
will  find  in  Canada  churches  as  many  men  as  women. 


256     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

In  the  West  you  will  find  more  men  than  women.  The 
church  is  not  relegated  to  "the  dear  sisters."  Shoulder 
to  shoulder  men  and  women  carry  the  burden  joyfully 
together,  which,  perhaps,  accounts  for  the  support  the 
church  receives  from  young  men.  An  episode  concern- 
ing *'the  dear  sisters"  will  long  be  remembered  of  one 
synod  in  Montreal.  A  poor  little  English  curate  had 
come  out  as  a  missionary  to  the  Indians  of  the  North- 
west. Such  misfits  are  pitiable,  as  well  as  laughable. 
When  you  consider  that  in  some  of  these  northern 
parishes  a  man  can  reach  his  different  missions  only 
by  canoe  or  dog-train,  that  the  missions  are  forty 
miles  apart,  that  the  canoe  must  run  rapids  and  the 
dog-train  dare  blizzards — an  effeminate  type  of  man 
is  more  of  a  tragedy  than  a  comedy.  I  think  of  one 
mission  where  the  circuit  is  four  hundred  miles  and  the 
distance  to  railroad,  doctor,  post-ofiice,  fifty-five  miles. 
This  little  curate  had  had  a  hard  time,  though  his 
mission  was  an  easy  one.  When  his  turn  came  to  re- 
port, his  face  resembled  the  reflection  on  an  inverted 
teaspoon.  Hardship  had  taken  all  the  bounce  and 
laugh  and  joy  and  rebound  out  of  him.  The  other 
frontier  missionaries  grew  restless  as  he  spoke.  One 
magnificent  specimen,  who  had  been  a  gambler  in  his 
unregenerate  days,  began  to  shuffle  uneasily.  When 
the  little  curate  whined  about  the  vices  of  the  Indians, 
this  big  frontier  missionary  pulled  off  his  coat.     (He 


THE    LIFE    OF    THE    PEOPLE        257 

explained  to  me  that  it  was  "a  hot  night" ;  besides  it 
**made  him  mad  to  hear  the  poor  Indians  damned  for 
their  vices,  when  white  men,  who  passed  as  gentlemen, 
had  more.")  Finally,  when  the  little  curate  appealed 
to  "the  dear  sisters  to  raise  money  to  build  a  fence," 
the  big  man  could  stand  it  no  longer.  He  ripped  his 
collar  loose  and  sprang  to  his  feet.  "Man,"  he  thun- 
dered, **pull  off  your  coat  and  build  your  own  fence 
and  don't  trouble  the  Lord  about  such  trifles.  I'm 
rich  on  thirty  dollars  a  year.  When  I  need  more,  I 
sell  a  steer.  Don't  let  us  bother  God-Almighty  with 
such  unmanly  puling  and  whining,"  and  much  more, 
he  said — which  I  have  told  elsewhere — ^which  brought 
that  audience  to  life  with  the  shocks  of  a  galvanic 
battery.  One  of  the  most  successful  Indian  mission- 
aries in  Canada  is  a  full  blood  Cree.  It  does  not  de- 
tract from  his  services  in  the  least  that  if  in  the  middle 
of  his  prayers  he  hears  the  wild  geese  coming  in 
spring,  he  bangs  the  Holy  Book  shut  and  shouts  for 
the  congregation  to  grab  their  guns  and  get  a  shot. 

The  virile  note  in  religious  life  is  one  of  the  chief 
reasons  for  its  support  in  Canada;  and  I  have  been 
amused  to  watch  English  and  American  friends  who 
have  gone  to  Canada  first  indifferent  to  the  church- 
going  habit,  then  touched  and  finally  caught  in  the 
current.  Does  the  habit  react  on  public  life?  Un- 
doubtedly and  most  strongly!     Catholic  Quebec  and 


258     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

Protestant  Ontario  for  years  literally  dictated  pro- 
vincial and  federal  policies ;  but,  with  the  shift  of  the 
balance  of  power  from  East  to  West,  that  shuffling  of 
Catholic  against  Protestant  and  vice  versa  has  ceased 
in  Canadian  politics ;  and  those  newspapers  that 
gained  their  support  playing  on  religious  prejudice 
have  had  to  sell  and  begin  with  a  new  sheet.  At  the 
same  time  no  policy  could  be  put  forward  in  Canada,  no 
man  could  stay  in  public  life  against  the  voice  of  the 
different  churches.  If  it  were  not  invidious,  examples 
could  be  given  of  public  men  relegated  to  private  life 
because  they  violated  the  principles  for  which  the 
church  stands.  The  church  in  Canada  is  not  a  dead 
issue.  It  is  not  the  city  of  refuge  for  the  failures  and 
the  misfits.  It  voices  the  ideals  of  Canadian  men  and 
women  busy  nation-building.  It  has  been  cynically 
said  that  the  church  in  England,  as  far  as  public  men 
are  concerned,  lays  all  its  emphasis  on  the  Eighth 
Commandment,  and  none  at  all  on  the  Seventh;  and 
that  the  church  in  the  United  States  lays  all  its  empha- 
sis on  the  Seventh  Commandment  and  none  at  all  on 
the  Eighth.  I  do  not  think  a  politician  could  be  a  spe- 
cial acrobat  with  either  of  these  Commandments  and 
stay  in  public  life  in  Canada.  The  clergy  would  "peel 
off"  those  coats  and  roll  up  their  sleeves  and  get  into 
the  fight.  There  would  be  a  lot  of  mud-slinging;  but 
the  culprit  would  go — as  not  a  few  have  gone  in  re- 
cent years. 


THE    LIFE    OF    THE    PEOPLE        859 
IV 

Deeply  grounded,  then,  so  deeply  that  the  Canadian 
is  unconscious  of  it,  put  the  belief  in  the  economic 
principle  of  vested  rights !  Still  more  deeply 
grounded,  put  a  belief  in  religious  ideals  as  a  working 
hypothesis!  Does  any  other  factor  enter  deeply  in 
Canadians'  every-day  living?  Yes — next  to  economic 
beliefs  and  religious  beliefs,  I  should  put  love  of  out- 
door sport  as  a  prime  factor  in  determining  Canadian 
character. 

Professional  sport  has  comparatively  little  place  in 
Canada,  though  professional  baseball  has  gained  a 
firm  foothold  in  the  Northwest,  where  the  American  in- 
fluence is  strong,  while  the  International  League 
reaches  over  the  boundary  in  the  East.  But  it  is  the 
amateur  who  enjoys  most  favor.  If  a  picked  team  of 
bank  clerks  and  office  hands  and  young  mechanics  in 
Winnipeg  practises  up  in  hockey  and  comes  down 
from  Winnipeg  and  licks  the  life  out  of  a  team  in 
Montreal  or  Ottawa,  or  gets  licked,  the  whole  popula- 
tion goes  hockey  mad.  This  churchly  nation  will 
gamble  itself  blue  in  the  face  with  bets  and  run  up 
gate  receipts  to  send  a  professional  home  sick  to  bed, 
and  I  have  known  of  employers  forgiving  youngsters 
who  bet  and  lost  six  months'  salary  in  advance.  Mont- 
real will  cheer  Winnipeg  just  as  wildly  when  Winni- 
peg wins  in  Montreal,  as  Winnipeg  will  cheer  Montreal 


260     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

when  Montreal  wins  in  Winnipeg.  It  is  not  the  win- 
ning. It  is  the  playing  of  clean  good  sport  that 
elicits  the  applause.  The  same  of  curling,  of  football, 
of  cricket,  of  rowing,  of  canoeing,  of  snowshoeing,  of 
yachting,  of  skeeing,  of  running.  When  an  Indian 
won  the  Marathon,  he  was  lionized  almost  to  his  un- 
doing. When  hardest  frost  used  to  come,  I  knew  a 
dear  old  university  professor,  who  would  have  consid- 
ered it  sin  to  touch  the  ace  of  spades,  who  used  to  hie 
him  down  to  the  rink  with  "bessom"  and  "stane"  and 
there  curl  on  the  ice  till  his  toes  almost  froze  on  his 
feet ;  and  one  Episcopal  clergyman  used  to  have  hard 
work  holding  back  hot  words  of  youthful  habit  on  the 
golf  links ;  and  his  people  loved  him  both  because  he 
golfed  and  because  he  almost  said  things,  when 
he  golfed.  They  would  rather  have  a  clergyman 
who  golfed  and  knew  "a  cuss  word"  when  he  saw  it, 
than  a  saint  who  couldn't  wield  a  club  and  might  faint 
at  such  words  as  golf  elicits. 

In  one  of  Canada's  best  rowing  crews,  a  millionaire 
merchant  was  the  acting  captain  of  the  crew  and 
among  his  men  were  a  printer,  an  insurance  canvasser, 
a  bank  clerk,  a  clerk  in  a  dry  goods  store.  In  one  of 
the  most  famous  hockey  teams  was  a  bicycle  repairer. 
Sport  in  Canada,  as  in  the  United  States,  is  the  most 
absolute  democracy.  I  can  think  of  no  man  in  Canada 
who  has  attained  a  permanently  good  place  in  social 
life  through  catering  to  women's  favor  with  dandified 


THE    LIFE    OF    THE    PEOPLE        261 

mannerisms,  though  not  a  few  have  got  a  leg  up  to 
come  most  terrible  croppers ;  but  I  do  think  of  many 
men  to  whom  all  doors  are  permanently  open  because 
they  are  such  clean  first-rate  sportsmen.  Until  the 
last  ten  years  of  opulent  fevered  prosperity  came  to 
the  Dominion,  Canada  might  have  been  described  as  a 
nation  of  athletes.  This  does  not  mean  that  Canada 
neglected  work  for  play.  It  means  that  she  worked  so 
robustly  because  she  had  developed  strength  on  the 
field  of  play.  Three  truths  are  almost  axiomatic 
about  nations  and  sport.  It  is  said  that  a  nation  is  as 
it  spends  its  leisure;  that  nations  only  win  battles  as 
their  boys  have  played  in  their  youth;  that  man's 
work  is  only  boy's  sport  full  grown.  The  religious 
little  catechist  may  win  prizes  in  the  parochial  school ; 
but  if  he  doesn't  learn  to  take  kicks  and  give  them 
good  and  hard,  in  play,  he  will  not  win  life's  prizes. 
Fair  play,  nerve,  poise,  agility,  act  that  jumps  with 
thought,  the  robust  fronting  of  life's  challenge — 
these  are  learned  far  more  on  the  toboggan  slide  where 
you  may  break  your  neck,  in  a  snowshoe  scamper,  than 
poring  over  books,  or  in  a  parlor.  I  do  not  know  that 
Canada  has  analyzed  it  out,  but  she  lives  it.  Young 
Canada  may  be  bumptious,  raw,  crude.  Time  tones 
these  things  down ;  but  she  is  not  tired  before  she  has 
begun  the  race.  She  is  not  nerve-collapsed  and  peeved 
and  insincere. 


THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 
V 


As  to  why  Canada  has  no  distinctive  and  great  lit- 
erature— I  confess  frankly  I  do  not  know.  England 
had  only  Canada's  population  when  a  Shakespeare 
and  a  Milton  rose  like  stars  above  the  world.  Scotland 
and  Ireland  both  have  a  smaller  population  than  Can- 
ada, and  their  ballads  are  sung  all  over  the  world. 
Canada  has  had  a  multitude  of  sweet  singers  pipe  the 
joys  of  youth,  but  as  life  broadened  and  deepened 
their  songs  did  not  reach  to  the  deeps  and  the  heights. 
Something  arrested  development.  They  did  not  go  on. 
Why.?  It  may  be  that  literature  rises  only  as  high  as 
its  fountain  springs — the  people ;  and  that  the  people 
of  Canada  have  not  yet  realized  themselves  clearly 
enough  to  recognize  or  give  articulation  to  a  national 
literature.  It  may  be  that  Canada  is  living  her  liter- 
ature rather  than  writing  it.  If  Scott  had  not  found 
appreciation  for  his  articulation  of  Scottish  life  and 
history  In  poems  and  novels,  he  would  not  have  gone 
on.  In  fact,  when  Byron  eclipsed  Scott  in  public  favor 
as  a  poet,  Scott  stopped  writing  poetry.  It  may  be 
that  Canada  has  not  become  sufficiently  unified — 
cemented  in  blood  and  suffering — to  appreciate  a  lit- 
erature that  distinctively  interprets  her  life  and  his- 
tory. It  may  be  that  she  has  been  swamped  by  the 
alien  literature  of  alien  lands,  for  the  writers  of 
English  to-day  are  legion.     Or  it  may  be  the  deeper 


THE    LIFE    OF    THE    PEOPLE        263 

cause  beneath  the  dearth  of  world  literature  just  now 
— lack  of  that  peace,  that  joyous  calm,  that  repose  of 
soul  and  freedom  from  distraction,  that  permits  a  cre- 
ator to  give  of  his  best. 

One  sometimes  hears  Canadians — particularly  in 
England — accused  of  crudity  in  speech.  I  confess  I 
like  the  crudities,  the  rawness,  the  colloquialisms. 
They  smack  of  the  new  life  in  a  new  land.  I  should 
be  sorry  if  Canadians  ever  began  to  Latinize  their  sen- 
tences, to  "can"  their  speech  and  pickle  it  in  the  vine- 
gar pedantry  of  the  peeved  study-chair  critic.  Be- 
cause it  is  a  land  of  mountain  pines  and  cataracts  and 
wild  winds,  I  would  have  their  speech  smack  always  of 
their  soil ;  and  I  would  bewail  the  day  that  Canadians 
began  to  measure  their  phrases  to  suit  the  yard  stick 
of  some  starveling  pedant  in  a  writer's  attic,  who  had 
never  been  nearer  reality  than  his  own  starvation.  I 
can  see  no  superiority  in  the  Englishman's  colloquial- 
isms of  "runnin',"  "playin',"  "goin',"  to  the  Cana- 
dian's "cut  it  out,"  "get  out,"  "beat  it."  One  is  the 
slovenliness  of  languor.  The  other  is  the  rawness  of 
vigor. 

VI 

When  one  comes  to  consider  woman  in  a  nation's  life, 
it  is  always  a  little  provoking  to  find  "woman"  and  "di- 
vorce" coupled  together ;  for  there  never  was  a  divorce 
without  a  man  involved  as  well  as  a  woman.    The  mar- 


264     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

riage  tie  is  not  easily  dissolved  in  Canada.  Divorce 
pleas  must  go  before  a  committee  of  the  Federal  Sen- 
ate. Without  legal  fees,  it  costs  five  hundred  dollars 
to  obtain  a  divorce  in  Canada ;  with  fees,  one  thousand 
dollars;  so  that  Canada's  divorce  record  is  1,530  for 
7,800,000  of  population  in  1913 ;  or  one  divorce  for 
every  5,000  people.  This  seems  a  laudably  low  rec- 
ord, and  Canada  takes  great  credit  to  herself  for  it.  I 
am  not  sure  she  should,  for  her  system  makes  divorce  a 
luxury  available  only  to  the  rich.  Divorce  is  not  a 
cause.  It  is  a  result.  I  am  not  sure  that  people  ill- 
mated  do  not  do  more  harm  to  their  children  staying 
together  than  separating ;  and  marriage  is  not  for  the 
man  or  the  woman,  but  for  the  race.  This  opinion, 
however,  would  be  considered  heresy  in  Canada,  and  a 
great  many  factors  conspire  to  help  woman's  status  in 
the  Dominion.  To  begin  with,  there  are  half  a  million 
more  men  than  women.  A  woman  need  never  give  her- 
self so  cheaply  as  to  spend  her  life  paying  for  her  pre- 
cipitancy. She  is  not  a  superfluous.  Another  point 
in  which  some  other  countries  could  emulate  Canada  is 
in  the  protection  of  women  and  children.  A  woman 
ill-mated  has  the  same  protection  under  the  law  as 
though  she  were  single.  Infringement  of  her  rights 
is  punishable  with  penalties  varying  from  seven  years 
and  the  lash  to  death.  A  man  living  on  a  woman's 
illicit  earnings  is  not  coddled  by  ward  heelers  and  let 
off  with  light  bail,  as  in  certain  notorious  California 


THE    LIFE    OF    THE    PEOPLE        265 

cases.  He  is  given  the  lash  and  seven  years.  Such 
offenders  seldom  come  up  for  sentence  twice. 

On  the  other  hand,  compared  to  punishments  for 
property  violations,  the  protection  of  women  and  chil- 
dren is  ridiculously  inadequate.  A  man  abducting  a 
girl  is  liable  to  sentence  of  five  years ;  a  man  stealing 
a  cow,  to  sentence  of  fourteen  years.  Counterfeiting 
coin  is  punished  by  life  imprisonment.  Misusing  a 
ward  or  employee  is  punished  by  two  years'  imprison- 
ment. This  remissness  is  no  index  to  a  subordinate 
position  by  women  in  Canada.  It  is  rather  simple  tes- 
timony to  the  fact  that  before  the  influx  of  alien  peo- 
ples certain  types  of  crime  were  unknown. 

There  is  little  of  sex  unrest  in  Canada.  In  fact,  sex 
as  sex  is  not  in  evidence,  which  is  a  symptom  of  whole- 
some relationships.  Perhaps  I  should  say  there  is  lit- 
tle of  that  feminine  discontent  and  revolt  so  strident  in 
older  lands.  This  I  attribute  to  two  facts :  an  overplus 
of  men,  and  boundless  opportunity  and  freedom  for 
the  expenditure  of  unused  energies.  In  certain  sec- 
tions of  England,  women  over-balanced  men  before  the 
war  as  ten  to  one.  What  the  over-balance  will  be  after 
the  war,  one  can  only  guess.  When  women  who  want 
to  marry  are  not  married,  or  married  to  types  differ- 
ent from  themselves — ^which  must  happen  when  the 
sexes  are  in  disproportion — ^unhappiness  must  result. 
Woman  is  at  war,  she  knows  not  with  what.  When 
women  who  are  full  of  energy  and  ability  have  nothing 


266     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

to  do,  there  Is  bound  to  be  unhapplness.  In  Canada  a 
woman  has  perfect  freedom  to  do  anything  she  chooses. 
Her  opportunity  Is  Hmited  only  by  her  own  person- 
ahty.  What  she  wills,  she  may.  If  she  can.  If  she 
can't,  then  her  quarrel  must  be  with  self,  not  with  life. 
Children  can  not  choose  their  parents;  but  a  woman 
can  choose  the  parent  of  her  child ;  and  when  her  choice 
Is  high  and  wide  and  happy,  it  bodes  better  for  the 
race  than  when  conditions  have  forced  her  Into  an  alli- 
ance that  must  be  more  or  less  of  an  armed  truce  on  a 
low  plane. 

As  an  example  of  the  fairness  of  marriage  laws  In 
Canada,  If  a  fur-trader  marry  an  Indian  woman — ac- 
cording to  the  custom  of  the  tribe,  simply  taking  her 
to  wife  without  ceremony,  she  Is  his  legal  heir,  and 
her  children  are  his  legal  heirs.  This  was  established 
In  a  famous  trial  in  the  courts  of  Quebec.  A  trader 
became  contractor  and  politician.  When  prosperity 
came,  he  discarded  his  Indian  wife  and  married  an 
English  girl.  On  his  death  the  Indian  wife  and  chil- 
dren sued  for  his  estate.  It  was  awarded  to  them  by 
the  courts  and  established  a  precedent  that  guaran- 
teed social  status  to  the  children  of  such  unions.  This 
is  one  of  the  things  that  easterners  can  not  compre- 
hend. I  have  never  heard  the  opprobrious  phrase 
"squaw  man"  used  on  the  Canadian  frontier ;  and  de- 
scendants of  the  MacKenzies,  the  Isblsters,  the  Har- 
dlstys,  the  Strathconas,  the  Macleans,  the  MacLeods 


THE    LIFE    OF    THE    PEOPLE        267 

— blush,  not  with  shame  but  pride,  in  acknowledging 
the  Indian  strain  of  blood. 

The  fact  that  some  of  the  western  provinces  noto- 
riously ignore  a  woman's  property  rights  in  her  hus- 
band's estate — is  sometimes  quoted  to  prove  the  un- 
fairness of  Canada's  laws  to  women.  I  am  no  defender 
of  those  lax  property  laws.  They  ought  to,  and  will 
soon,  be  changed;  but  let  us  give  even  the  devil  his 
dues ;  and  the  devil  in  this  case  was  the  mad  real  estate 
speculation.  When  thousands  of  adventurers  poured 
in  from  everywhere  and  began  buying  and  selling  and 
reselling  property,  it  impeded  quick  turn  overs  to  re- 
serve the  absent  wife's  third.  Sometimes,  as  in  the 
case  of  a  famous  actor,  the  wives  numbered  four.  Or- 
dinarily in  Canada — certainly  in  eastern  provinces — 
a  third  is  the  wife's  reserve  unless  she  sign  it  away. 
How  four  wives  could  each  have  a  third  was  a  poser 
for  the  speculator  and  the  knot  was  cut  by  ignoring 
the  wife's  claims.  Now  that  the  fevered  mad  mania 
of  speculation  is  over  this  remissness  of  the  law  in  two 
provinces  will  doubtless  be  remedied. 


CHAPTER  XV 


EMIGRATION    AND    DEVELOPMENT 


You  can  ascribe  the  different  characteristics  of  dif- 
ferent nations  to  the  topography  of  their  native  land 
— up  to  a  certain  point  only.  Beyond  that  the  differ- 
ence becomes  one  of  psychology  and  soul  rather  than 
geography,  and  that  is  why  nations  hold  to  a  large 
extent  their  destiny  in  their  own  hands.  Undoubtedly 
the  unfenced  illimitable  reaches  of  the  prairie  have 
reacted  on  the  human  soul,  unshackling  it  from  the 
discouragements  of  failure  in  the  past  and  have  given 
a  sense  of  freedom  that  explains  the  dauntless  op- 
timism of  the  West ;  but  if  the  people  who  went  to  the 
West  had  not  had  the  courage  to  face  the  hardships 
of  the  pioneer,  their  optimism  could  not  have  tri- 
umphed over  difficulties.  The  very  qualities  that  sent 
pioneers  forth  on  the  trail  to  the  setting  sun  guar- 
anteed their  success  as  empire  builders. 

Japan  was  long  an  island  empire,  but  It  was  only 
when  the  soul  of  that  empire  awakened  to  the  Western 

268 


EMIGRATION    AND    DEVELOPMENT     269 

Renaissance  that  Japan  became  a  world  power.  The 
German  people  existed  on  the  map  many  centuries  be- 
fore they  came  into  existence  as  a  nation.  It  was  only 
when  the  national  idea  came  that  Germany  became  a 
power.  Likewise  of  England  as  mistress  of  the  seas — 
the  source  of  her  commerce  and  wealth.  England  had 
been  a  seagirt  nation  from  the  beginning  of  time.  It 
was  only  when  by  the  defeat  of  the  Armada  England 
learned  what  mastery  of  the  sea  meant  that  she  shot 
into  front  rank  as  a  great  world  power. 

How  does  all  this  bear  on  Canada.''  It  is  a  puzzling 
question.  Ask  the  average  Canadian  why  the  develop- 
ment of  Canada  has  been  slow;  and  he  denies  that  it 
has  been  slow ;  or  he  proves  that  it  is  a  good  thing  it 
has  been  slow;  or  he  compares  Canada's  progress 
with  that  of  some  other  country  which  has  gone  too 
fast,  or  too  slow.  All  this  is  a  mere  clever  dodging 
of  fact.  Blinking  one's  eyes  to  a  fact  doesn't  elimi- 
nate the  fact. 

n 

What  are  the  facts  ? 

De  Monts'  first  charter  to  Arcadia  dates  1605. 
The  first  charter  for  Virginia  plantations  comes  in 
1606,  and  the  first  New  England  charter  dates  the 
same  year.  The  United  States  and  Canada  are  both 
fertile.  They  have  almost  the  same  area  in  square 
miles.     One  has  a  population  of  over  ninety  millions 


270     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

and  a  foreign  commerce  of  four  billions.  The  other 
has  a  population  of  about  eight  millions  and  a  foreign 
commerce  of  one  billion.  One  raises  from  seven  hun- 
dred to  nine  hundred  million  bushels  of  wheat;  the 
other,  from  two  hundred  to  three  hundred  millions. 
One  produces  thirt}^  million  metric  tons  of  steel  a 
year ;  the  other,  less  than  a  million  tons ;  one  is  worth 
a  hundred  and  fifty  billion  dollars,  the  other  perhaps 
ten  billions. 

It  is  explained  that  the  northern  belt  of  Canada 
lying  in  a  semi-arctic  zone  should  hardly  be  included 
in  comparisons  with  the  area  of  the  United  States 
lying  altogether  in  a  temperate  zone;  but  if  cultiva- 
tion is  proving  one  thing  more  than  another,  it  is 
that  Canada's  arctic  region  recedes  a  little  every  year, 
and  her  isothermal  lines  run  a  little  farther  north 
every  year.  To  put  it  differently,  it  is  being  yearly 
more  and  more  proved  that  the  degree  of  northern 
latitude  matters  less  in  vegetable  growth  than  here- 
tofore thought,  if  the  arable  land  be  there ;  for  the 
simple  reason  that  twenty  hours  of  sunlight  from 
May  to  September  force  as  rapid  a  growth  as  twelve 
to  fifteen  hours'  sunlight  from  March  to  September, 
and  the  product  grown  in  the  North  may  be  superior 
to  that  grown  farther  south.  Wheat  from  Manitoba 
is  better  than  wheat  from  Georgia.  Apples  from  Ni- 
agara have  a  quality  not  found  in  apples — say  from 
the  Gulf  states.    All  things  will  not  grow  In  northern 


EMIGRATION   AND   DEVELOPMENT    ^71 

latitudes.  You  can't  raise  corn.  You  can't  raise 
peaches.  I  doubt  if  any  apple  will  ever  be  found 
suitable  for  the  northwestern  prairie.  At  any  rate, 
it  has  not  yet  been  found. 

Half  a  century  ago  the  Governor  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Company  in  perfectly  good  faith  testified  before 
a  committee  of  the  Imperial  Commons  that  farming 
could  never  be  carried  on  in  Rupert's  Land,  or  what 
are  now  known  as  Manitoba,  Saskatchewan  and  Al- 
berta. He  proved  that  grain  could  not  be  grown 
there.  I  recall  the  day  when  the*  idea  of  fall  wheat 
west  of  Lake  Superior  elicited  a  hoot  of  derision.  I 
have  lived  to  wander  through  fields  of  six  hundred 
acres  north  of  the  Saskatchewan.  Thirty  years  ago 
any  one  suggesting  settlement  on  Peace  River,  or 
at  Athabasca,  would  have  been  regarded  as  a  visionary 
fool.  Yet  wheat  is  ground  into  flour  on  Peace  River, 
and  the  settler  is  at  Athabasca;  and  soft  Kansas  fall 
wheat  sent  to  Peace  River  has  by  a  few  years'  trans- 
planting been  transformed  into  Number  One  Hard 
spring  wheat.  Canada's  arctic  belt  has  shrunk  a  little 
each  year,  and  her  isothermal  lines  gone  a  little  far- 
ther north.  The  only  limit  to  growth  in  the  North 
Country  is  the  nature  of  the  soil.  I  am  not,  of  course, 
speaking  of  the  Arctic  slope,  but  I  am  of  the  great 
belt  of  wild  land  north  of  Saskatchewan  River.  And 
where  the  arable  land  stops,  the  great  fur  farm  of  the 
world  begins — a  fur  farm  which  may  change  but  can 


272     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

never  be  exhausted.  Of  course,  Canada  has  a  great 
northern  belt  of  land  that  is  not  arable,  but  in  that 
belt  are  such  precious  minerals  as  were  discovered  in 
the  Yukon.  Land  that  can't  be  plowed  isn't  neces- 
sarily waste  land,  and  Canada's  great  northern  belt 
is  partly  balanced  by  the  desert  belt  of  the  Southwest 
in  the  United  States — the  perpetual  Indian  land  of 
Uncle  Sam. 

in 

With  this  argument — ^you  come  back  just  where 
you  began.  The  two  countries  were  first  settled  al- 
most contemporaneously.  Their  area  is  not  far  dif- 
ferent. They  are  both  fertile.  Each  has  great  belts 
— having  spent  months  in  each  belt,  I  hesitate  to  call 
them  barren — of  land  that  can  not  be  plowed.  Why 
has  one  country  progressed  with  such  marvelous  ra- 
pidity; and  the  other  progressed  in  fits  and  starts 
and  stops.?  Why  did  a  million  and  a  half  Canadians 
— or  one-fourth  the  native  population — leave  Canada 
for  the  United  States.?  The  Canadian  retort  always 
is — for  the  same  reason  that  two  million  Americans 
have  left  the  United  States  for  Canada — to  better 
their  position.  But  the  point  is — ^why  was  it  these 
million  and  a  half  Canadians  found  better  opportuni- 
ties in  the  United  States  than  in  Canada?  Oppor- 
tunities knock  at  every  man's  door  if  he  has  ears  to 
hear,  but  they  are  usually  supposed  to  knock  loudest 


EMIGRATION    AND   DEVELOPMENT     273 

and  oftenest  in  the  new  land.  It  is  a  truism  that  there 
are  ten  chances  on  the  frontier  for  a  man  to  rise  com- 
pared to  one  in  the  city.  One  can  understand  Amer- 
ican settlers  thronging  to  Canada.  They  have  used 
and  made  good  the  opportunities  in  their  own  land. 
Now  they  are  sending  their  sons  to  a  land  of  more 
opportunities.  The  Iowa  farmer  who  has  succeeded 
on  his  three  hundred  and  twenty  acres  sends  forth  his 
sons  each  to  succeed  on  his  one  hundred  and  sixty 
acres  in  Canada;  or  he  sells  his  own  land  for  one 
hundred  dollars  an  acre  and  forthwith  buys  a  thou- 
sand acres  in  Canada.  When  the  farmers  of  On- 
tario flocked  to  Wisconsin  and  Michigan  and  Min- 
nesota and  the  two  Dakotas,  their  land  was  worth 
thirty  per  cent,  less  than  when  they  bought  it.  To-day 
that  same  land  is  worth  one  hundred  per  cent,  more 
than  for  what  they  sold  it. 

It  is  easy  to  look  over  another  land  and  diagnose 
its  ills.  Any  Canadian  will  acknowledge  that  Ire- 
land's population  dropped  from  8,500,000  in  1850 
to  4,400,000  in  1908  solely  owing  to  mismanagement, 
if  not  gross  misgovernment ;  but  he  will  not  acknowl- 
edge that  his  own  country  lost  a  million  and  a  half 
people  from  the  same  cause.  Ireland  lost  her  popula- 
tion at  the  rate  of  one  hundred  thousand  a  year  for 
forty  years,  and  that  lost  population  helped  to  build 
up  some  of  the  greatest  cities  in  the  United  States. 
The  Irish  vote  is  to-day  a  dominant  power  solely 


274     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

owing  to  that  population  lost  to  Ireland.  It  is  no 
exaggeration  to  say  that  from  1880  to  1890  Canada 
lost  her  population  to  the  United  States  at  a  higher 
rate  than  one  hundred  thousand  a  year.    Why? 

Go  back  a  little  in  history !  The  most  pugnacious 
United  Empire  Loyalist  that  ever  trekked  from  the 
American  colonies  to  Ontario  and  Nova  Scotia  and 
New  Brunswick  would  hardly  deny  that  Canada  was 
grossly  misgoverned  under  the  French  regime.  La- 
borers were  forced  to  work  unpaid  on  fortifications, 
on  roads,  on  governors'  palaces.  The  farmer  was 
taxed  to  death  in  tithes  to  the  seignior.  Shipping  was 
confined  to  French  vessels  owned  by  royal  favorites. 
Fishing  was  permitted  only  under  a  license.  The  fur 
trade  was  a  corrupt  monopoly  held  by  a  closed  ring 
round  the  Royal  Intendant.  New  France  was  so  mis- 
governed that  the  sons  of  the  best  families  took  to  the 
woods  and  the  Pays  d'en  Haut — to  which  fact  we 
owe  the  exploration  of  three-quarters  of  the  continent. 
And  the  most  pugnacious  Loyalist  will  hardly  deny 
that  under  the  British  regime  from  1759  to  Dur- 
ham's Report  in  1840  the  mismanagement  was  almost 
as  gross  as  the  misgovernment  under  the  French.  If 
any  one  entertain  doubts  on  that  score,  let  him  look 
up  the  record  on  grants  of  thousands  of  acres  to  fa- 
vorites of  the  Family  Compact;  on  peculations  of 
public  funds  in  Quebec  by  irresponsible  executives; 
on  mistrials  of  disorders  in  the  Fur  Country,  when 


EMIGRATION   AND   DEVELOPMENT     275 

North- Wester  and  Hudson's  Bay  traders  cut  each  oth- 
er's throats ;  on  the  constant  bicker  and  bark  between 
Protestant  Ontario  and  Catholic  Quebec,  which  kept 
the  country  rent  by  rehgious  dissensions  when  men 
should  have  been  empire-building. 

Set  down  the  cause  of  Canada's  slow  progress  up  to 
1840  to  misgovernment.  Durham's  Report  remedied 
all  that;  and  confederation  followed  in  1867.  Was 
Canada's  progress  as  swift  after  1867  as  it  ought  to 
have  been  ?    Examine  a  few  figures : 

In  1790  the  United  States  population  was  four  mil- 
lions. 

In  1800  the  United  States  population  was  five  mil- 
lions. 

In  1914  the  United  States  population  was  ninety- 
eight  millions. 

In  1891  Canada's  population  was  five  millions. 

In  1900  Canada's  population  was  five  million  three 
hundred  thousand. 

In  1914  Canada's  population  was  seven  million 
eight  hundred  thousand. 

In  point  of  population  Canada  is  just  one  hundred 
years  behind  the  United  States.  Why.''  Granted  her 
foreign  trade  is  one-fourth  as  great  as  that  of  the 
United  States.  How  is  it  that  a  people  with  such  a 
genius  for  success  in  foreign  trade  have  been  so  dila- 
tory in  their  work  of  nation-building?  Slow  progress 
can  no  longer  be  ascribed  to  misgovernment.     Her 


^76    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

system  of  justice  is  one  of  the  most  perfect  in  the 
world.  Her  parliamentary  representation  could 
hardly  be  more  complete.  No  people  has  stricter 
bit  and  rein  on  executive  ministers.  Through  an  an- 
guish of  travail  Canada  has  worked  out  an  excellent 
system  of  self-government.  Why  is  her  progress  still 
slow? 

Of  course  one  reason  for  her  slow  progress  in  the 
past  was  the  impression  that  long  prevailed  regarding 
Canada's  climate  and  agricultural  possibilities.  The 
officials  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  contended  that 
the  Northwest  was  unfit  for  settlement,  and  it  was 
only  within  recent  times  that  the  contrary  view  gained 
a  hearing  and  proved  to  be  true.  With  vast  tracts  of 
unoccupied  land  in  the  milder  climate  of  the  United 
States  still  open  to  settlement  and  with  Canadians 
themselves  denying  that  the  great  Northwest  could 
be  cultivated,  it  is  not  strange  that  most  immi- 
grants passed  Canada  by.  Furthermore  in  those 
days  the  glamour  of  democracy  fascinated  dissatisfied 
Europeans  who  swarmed  to  the  New  World.  Canada 
was  practically  as  free  as  the  United  States,  but  she 
was  a  possession  of  the  British  Crown,  and  many  emi- 
grants, especially  from  the  Emerald  Isle,  preferred 
to  try  the  experiment  of  living  in  a  republic. 

But  there  are  other  reasons.  It  was  after  the  Civil 
War  that  the  American  high  tariff  struck  Canada  an 
unintended  but  nevertheless   staggering  blow.     She 


EMIGRATION    AND    DEVELOPMENT     277 

had  no  market.  She  had  to  build  up  transportation 
system  and  trade  routes,  but  this  was  well  under  way 
by  1890.  Has  her  progress  since  1890  kept  pace 
with  the  United  States?  One  has  but  to  compare  the 
population  between  the  Mississippi  and  Seattle  with 
the  population  between  Red  River  and  Vancouver  to 
have  the  answer  to  this  question. 

Is  it  something  in  the  soul;  a  habit  of  discourage- 
ment ;  of  marking  time ;  of  fighting  shy  on  the  de- 
fensive instead  of  jumping  into  the  aggressive;  of 
self-derogation ;  of  criticism  instead  of  construction ; 
of  foreshortened  vision  ?  A  diagnosis  can  be  made 
from  symptoms.  I  set  down  a  few  of  the  symptoms. 
There  may  be  many  more,  and  the  thinker  must  trace 
up — a  surgeon  would  "guess" — his  own  diagnosis. 


IV 


If  it  were  not  such  a  tiresome  task,  it  could  be 
shown  from  actual  quotations  that  there  is  not  a  paper 
published  in  Canada  that  at  some  time  during  the  year 
does  not  deliver  itself  of  sentiments  regarding  the 
United  States  which  may  be  paraphrased  thus :  "We 
thank  God  we  are  not  as  Thou  art !"  Now  the  point 
may  be  well  taken ;  and  Canada  should  be  thankful 
to  God  (and  keep  her  powder  dry)  that  crimes  are 
punished,  that  innocence  is  protected,  that  vice  is  not 
a  factor  in  civic  government;  but  it  is  a  dangerous 


278     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

attitude  for  any  people  to  assume  toward  another 
nation.  It  does  not  turn  the  soul-searchings  in  on 
self.  It  does  not  get  down  beneath  the  skin  of  things ; 
down,  for  instance,  beneath  a  hide  of  self -righteous- 
ness to  meanness  or  nobility  of  motive.  A  big  ship 
always  has  barnacles ;  the  United  States  is  a  big  ship, 
and  she  keeps  her  engine  going  and  her  speed  up  and 
in  the  main  her  prow  headed  to  a  big  destiny.  It  ill 
becomes  a  little  ship  to  bark  out — but  let  it  be  left 
unsaid ! 

While  this  curious  assumption  of  superiority  exists 
Internationally,  there  is  the  most  contradictory  depre- 
ciation nationally.  "We,"  they  say,  "are  onlj'^  a  little 
people."  So  was  Switzerland.  So  was  Greece.  So 
was  Belgium.     So,  indeed,  were  the  Jews. 

You  never  mention  a  Jim  Hill,  a  Doctor  Osier,  a 
Schurman,  a  Graham  Bell — or  a  host  of  similar  fa- 
mous expatriates — in  a  Canadian  gathering  but  some 
one  utters  with  a  pride  of  gratulation  that  fairly 
beams  from  the  face:  "They  are  Canadians."  Canada 
is  proud  these  famous  men  are  Canadians.  It  has 
always  struck  me  as  curious  that  she  wasn't  ashamed 
— ashamed  that  she  lost  their  services  from  her  own 
nation-building.  To  my  personal  knowledge  three  of 
these  men  had  to  borrow  the  money  to  leave  Canada. 
Their  services  were  worth  untold  wealth  to  other  lands. 
Their  services  did  not  give  them  a  living  in  Canada. 

At  time  of  writing — ^wlth  only  three  exceptions — 


EMIGRATION    AND    DEVELOPMENT     279 

Canada  imports  the  presidents  of  her  great  universi- 
ties; though  she  exports  some  of  the  greatest  presi- 
dents and  deans  who  have  ever  graced  Princeton,  Cor- 
nell, Oxford.  She  thinks  she  can  not  afford  to  keep 
these  men.  Is  it  a  matter  of  money,  at  all ;  or  of  ap- 
preciative intelligence?  No  matter  what  the  cost,  can 
Canada  afford  to  lose  them  from  her  young  nationals? 

It  is  a  truism  that  to  my  knowledge  has  not  a  single 
exception  that  Canada  has  never  given  the  imprima- 
tur of  her  approval  to  a  writer,  to  an  inventor,  to  a 
scholar,  to  an  artist,  till  he  has  gone  abroad  and  re- 
ceived the  stamp  of  approval  outside  his  own  land. 
By  the  time  Paul  Peel  was  acclaimed  in  Paris  and 
Horatio  Walker  in  New  York  each  was  lost  to  his 
own  land.  It  is  an  even  wager  nine  Canadians  out 
of  ten  do  not  know  who  these  men  were  or  for  what 
they  were  acclaimed.  Try  it  as  an  experiment  on 
your  first  train  acquaintance. 

You  can  not  read  early  records  of  Congress  with- 
out the  most  astounding  realization  that  Washington, 
Monroe,  Jefferson,  Adams,  big  statesmen  and  little 
politicians,  voicing  solemn  convictions  or  playing  to 
the  gallery — all  were  deadly  in  earnest  and  serious 
about  the  business  of  building  up  a  nation.  They 
never  lost  sight  of  the  idea  of  conserving,  up-building, 
protecting,  extending  their  country.  The  national 
idea  is  in  Canada  so  recent  that  most  men  have  not 
grasped  it.     "Build  a  navy?"     Canada  hooted  and 


280     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

made  the  vote  a  party  football.  "Canada  should  have 
her  own  shipyards?"  Men  look  at  you!  What  for? 
"Panama  will  reverse  the  world  conduits  of  trade." 
Bah !  Hot-air !  I  have  heard  these  and  similar  com- 
ments not  once  but  a  thousand  times. 

Americans  say  of  opportunity — "How  much  can 
we  make  of  it?"  Canadians  say — "How  little  can  we 
pay  for  it?"  And  each  takes  out  of  opportunity 
exactly  the  amount  of  optimism  put  into  it. 

So  one  could  go  down  the  list  enumerating  symp- 
toms, but  beneath  them  all,  it  is  plain,  lies  a  cause 
psychological,  not  physical.  It  may  be  a  psychology 
of  discouragement  and  disparagement  from  long 
years  of  hardship,  but  whatever  it  is,  if  Canada  is 
to  be  as  big  nationally  as  she  is  latitudinally,  as  great 
in  soul  as  in  area,  she  must  get  rid  of  this  negative 
thing  in  her  attitude  to  herself  and  life.  It  makes 
for  solidity,  but  it  also  makes  for  stolidity.  Nations 
do  not  grow  great  by  what  they  leave  undone.  Psy- 
chologists say  all  mentality  divides  itself  into  two 
great  classes:  those  giving  off  negative  response  to 
stimulus ;  those  giving  off  positive.  One  class  of 
people  stands  for  carping  criticism;  the  other,  for 
constructive  attempts.  One  is  safe,  to  be  sure,  and 
sane;  and  the  other  is  distinctively  rash  and  danger- 
ous; but  of  rashness  and  danger  Is  valor  made.  "I 
know  thy  works,"  said  the  Voice  to  the  Laodiceans, 
"that  thou  art  neither  hot  nor  cold:    I  would  thou 


EMIGRATION   AND   DEVELOPMENT     281 

wert  hot  or  cold  .  .  .  because  thou  art  lukewarm, 
and  neither  hot  nor  cold,  I  will  spue  thee  out  of  my 
mouth." 

And  the  Voice  is  the  verdict  of  destiny  to  every  na- 
tion that  has  taken  its  place  at  the  world's  council 
board. 


CHAPTER  XVI 


DEFEKSE 


Having  spent  a  hundred  years  working  out  a  sys- 
tem of  government  almost  perfect  in  its  democracy, 
and  having  spent  fifty  more  years  working  out  a  sys- 
tem of  trade  and  transportation  that  gives  Canada 
sixth  rank  in  the  gross  foreign  trade  of  the  world 
nations — one  would  think  the  Dominion  entitled  to  lie 
back  resting  on  her  laurels  reaping  the  reward  that  is 
undoubtedly  hers. 

But  nations  can  no  more  rest  in  their  development 
than  men.  To  stop  means  to  go  back.  To  rest  means 
to  rust,  and  Canada  to-day  must  face  one  of  the  most 
serious  problems  in  her  national  history.  What  is 
worth  having  is  worth  holding,  and  what  is  worth 
holding  must  always  be  defended.  The  strong  man 
does  not  go  out  challenging  a  fight.  The  very  fact 
that  he  is  strong  prevents  other  men  challenging  him 
to  a  fight,  and  Canada  must  face  the  need  of  national 
defense. 

So  remote  did  the  need  of  national  defense  seem  to 
Canada  that  as  late  as  May  of  1913  the  Senate  re- 
jected Premier  Borden's  plan  for  Canada  to  contribute 

282 


DEFENSE  283 

her  quota  in  cost  to  the  British  navy.  The  Laurier 
government  had  proposed  building  a  small  navy  for 
the  Dominion.  This  was  hooted  by  the  French  Na- 
tionalists, and  when  the  Borden  government  came  into 
power,  the  policy  was  modified  from  building  a  small 
navy  to  bearing  a  quota  of  the  cost  of  a  navy  built 
and  equipped  by  Imperial  power.  In  the  rejection  of 
this  policy,  the  composition  of  the  Senate  and  Com- 
mons should  be  observed.  The  Commons  were  Con- 
servative, or  supporters  of  Premier  Borden,  and  the 
Government  Navy  Bill  passed  the  Commons  by  one 
hundred  and  one  to  sixty-eight.  The  Nationalists 
voted  with  the  opposition  or  the  Liberals.  The  Na- 
tionalists are  the  small  French  party  pledged  against 
Canada's  intervention  in  European  affairs.  Laurier 
having  been  in  power  for  almost  two  decades,  the  Sen- 
ate was,  of  course,  tinged  with  the  Liberal  policy. 
They  could  not  completely  reject  a  naval  policy  with- 
out repudiating  Laurier's  former  policy;  so  they  re- 
jected the  Borden  Naval  Bill  on  the  ground  that  it 
ought  to  have  been  submitted  to  the  electorate.  The 
vote  in  the  Senate  was  fifty-one  to  twenty-seven.  In 
the  Senate  were  fifty-four  Liberals — or  supporters  of 
Laurier — and  thirty-two  Conservatives,  or  supporters 
of  Borden.  In  other  words,  so  remote  did  the  possible 
need  of  defense  seem  that  both  parties  played  politics 
with  it. 

For  a  hundred  years  Canada  had  been  at  peace. 


284     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

The  Rebellion  of  1837  can  hardly  be  called  a  war. 
In  1870  the  Indian  unrest  known  as  the  First  Riel 
Rebellion  had  occurred,  but  this  amounted  to  little 
more  than  a  joy  jaunt  for  the  troops  under  Lord 
Wolseley  to  Red  River.  The  Riel  Uprising  of  1885 
was  more  serious ;  but  every  Canadian  who  gave  the 
matter  any  thought  at  all  knew  there  had  been 
genuine  cause  for  grievance  among  the  half-breeds; 
and  fewer  lives  were  lost  in  this  rebellion  than  in  many 
a  train  or  mine  accident.  Canada  sent  to  the  South 
African  War  troops  who  distinguished  themselves  to 
such  an  extent  as  to  give  a  feeling  of  almost  false 
security  to  the  Dominion.  On  every  frontier  are  men 
bom  to  the  rifle  and  the  saddle — ready-made  troopers ; 
but  as  the  frontier  shrinks,  this  class  deteriorates  and 
softens. 

For  a  hundred  years  Canada  has  been  at  peace  with 
the  outside  world.  For  three  thousand  miles  along  her 
southern  border  dwells  a  neighbor  who  has  often  been 
a  rival  in  trade  and  with  whom  Canada  has  had  many 
a  dispute  as  to  fisheries  and  boundaries  and  tariff,  but 
along  this  borderland  of  three  thousand  miles  exists  not 
a  single  fort,  points  not  a  single  gun,  watches  not  a  sin- 
gle soldier.  It  is  a  question  if  another  such  example 
of  international  friendship  without  international  pact 
exists  in  the  history  of  the  world.  Where  international 
boundaries  in  Europe  bristle  with  forts  and  cannon, 
international  boundaries  in  America  are  a  shuttle  of 


DEFENSE  286 

traffic  back  and  forth  of  great  migrations  of  popula- 
tion, of  great  waves  of  friendship  and  good  feeling 
which  all  the  trade  rivalries  and  hostile  tariffs  of  a 
half  century  have  failed  to  stem.  The  pot  shot  of 
some  fishery  patrol  across  the  nets  of  a  poacher  on  the 
wrong  side  of  the  international  line  fails  to  excite 
anybody.  Even  if  some  flag  lunatic  full  of  whisky 
climbs  a  flagstaff  and  tears  down  the  other  country's 
national  emblem — the  boundary  does  not  go  on  fire. 
The  authorities  cool  such  alcoholic  patriotism  with  a 
water  hose,  or  ten  days  in  the  lock-up.  The  papers 
run  a  half  column,  and  that  is  all  there  is  about  it. 

So  why  should  Canada  become  excited  over  national 
defense?  On  the  south  is  a  boundary  without  a  fort, 
without  a  gun,  guarded  by  a  powerful  nation  with  a 
Monroe  Doctrine  challenging  the  world  neither  to 
seize  nor  colonize  in  the  Western  Hemisphere.  On  the 
east  for  three  thousand  miles  washes  the  Atlantic,  on 
the  west  for  five  thousand  miles  the  Pacific — what  has 
Canada  to  fear?  "Why,"  asked  the  Conservatives, 
"should  we  support  the  Laurier  policy  of  building  a 
tin-pot  navy?"  "Why,"  retorted  the  Liberals  when 
Laurier  went  out  and  Borden  went  in,  "should  we  sup- 
port the  Borden  Navy  Bill  to  contribute  good  Cana- 
dian cash  to  a  British  navy?" 

Besides,  in  the  back  of  Canada's  collective  head — 
as  it  were — in  a  sort  of  unspoken  consciousness  was 
the  almost  religious  conviction  that  the  Dominion  had 


286     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

contributed  her  share  toward  Imperial  defense  in  her 
transportation  system.  Had  she  not  granted  fifty-five 
million  acres  of  land  for  the  different  transcontinental 
and  spent  far  over  a  billion  in  loans  and  subsidies  and 
guarantees?  Value  that  land  at  ten  dollars  an  acre. 
That  was  tantamount  to  an  expenditure  of  two  hun- 
dred dollars  per  capita  for  a  transportation  system  of 
use  to  the  empire  in  Imperial  defense.  Seventy  train- 
loads  of  Hindu  troops  were  rushed  across  Canada  in 
cars  with  drawn  blinds  and  transported  to  Europe 
before  the  enemy  knew  such  a  movement  was  contem- 
plated. Should  Turkey  ever  cut  off  Suez,  Canada  and 
Panama  would  be  England's  route  to  India.  In  addi- 
tion, Canada  considers  herself  the  granary  of  the  em- 
pire. Should  Suez  ever  cut  off  the  path  to  India  and 
Australia,  what  colony  could  feed  England  but 
Canada  ? 

You  will  note  that  Canada's  thought  concerned  the 
empire,  not  herself.  The  reason  for  the  navy  bills  pro- 
posed by  both  parties  has  been  Imperial  defense.  That 
Canada  might  some  day  be  compelled  to  fight  for  her 
own  existence — and  fight  to  the  death  for  it — never 
dawned  on  her  legislators;  and  their  unconsciousness 
of  national  peril  is  the  profoundest  testimony  to  the 
pacific  intentions  of  the  United  States  that  could  be 
given.  It  seems  almost  treason  at  this  era  of  world 
war  to  call  Canada's  attention  to  the  fact  that  the 
greatest  danger  is  not  to  Imperial  defense.     It  is  to 


DEFENSE  287 

Canada's  national  defense.  Uncle  Sam  has  been  Can- 
ada's big  brother,  but  what  if  when  the  danger  came, 
his  arms  were  tied  in  a  conflict  of  his  own  ?  Whatever 
comes  to  menace  the  United  States  will  menace  the 
safety  of  Canada ;  and  with  swift  cruisers,  Europe  and 
Asia  are  nearer  Canada  to-daj  than  Halifax  is  near 
Vancouver.  Either  city  could  be  attacked  by  foreign 
powers  before  military  aid  could  be  transported  across 
the  width  of  Canada.  We  are  nearer  Europe  to-day 
than  the  North  was  near  the  South  in  the  Civil  War. 
It  takes  a  shorter  time  to  transport  troops  across  At- 
lantic or  Pacific  than  it  formerly  took  to  send  a  Min- 
nesota regiment  to  Maryland.  Including  Quebec, 
Montreal,  old  Port  Royal,  Annapolis,  Louisburg  and 
the  forts  on  Hudson  Bay,  Canada's  chief  strongholds 
of  defense  have  been  taken  and  retaken  seven  times 
by  European  enemies  in  one  hundred  and  sixty  years 
— ^between  1629  and  1789.  Day  was  when  Quebec 
fortifications  cost  so  much  that  the  King  of  France 
wanted  to  know  if  they  were  laid  in  gold.  Before  the 
fall  of  Quebec  in  1759,  Louisburg — a  forgotten  fort- 
ress of  Cape  Breton — was  considered  one  of  France's 
strongholds.  Have  Canadians  forgotten  the  frightful 
wreck  of  the  British  fleet  in  the  St.  Lawrence  in  1711 
under  Sir  Havender  Walker;  or  the  defeat  of  the 
admiralty  ships  manned  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  fur- 
traders  up  off  Port  Nelson  in  1697  by  Lemoyne 
d'  Iberville?    Before  La  Perouse  reduced  Churchill  it 


288     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

was  regarded  as  a  second  Gibraltar.  Yet  Churchill 
and  Nelson  and  Quebec  and  Louisburg  all  fell  before 
a  foreign  foe,  and  Europe  is  nearer  to-day  than  she 
was  in  those  eras  of  terrible  defeat.  What  additional 
fortifications  or  defenses  has  Canada  to  be  so  cocksure 
that  history  can  never  repeat  itself?  She  is  not  rest- 
ing under  the  Monroe  Doctrine.  It  is  a  safe  wager 
that  many  Canadians  have  never  heard  of  the  Mon- 
roe Doctrine.  Besides,  the  minute  Canada  voluntarily 
enters  a  European  war,  does  she  forfeit  American  "pro- 
tection" under  that  Monroe  Doctrine?  The  idea  of 
being  "protected"  by  any  power  but  her  own — and 
Britain's — right  arm  Canada  would  scout  to  derision. 
Yet  what  are  her  own  national  defenses  ? 

Her  regular  forces  ordinarily  consist  of  less  than 
three  thousand  men ;  her  volunteer  forces  of  forty-five 
to  sixty  thousand.  By  law  it  is  provided  that  the  Do- 
minion militia  consist  of  all  male  inhabitants  of  the 
age  of  eighteen  and  under  sixty,  divided  into  four 
classes :  from  eighteen  to  thirty  years  of  age  unmar- 
ried or  widowers ;  from  thirty  to  forty-five  unmarried 
or  widowers;  from  eighteen  to  forty-five  married  or 
widowers;  men  of  all  classes  between  forty-five  and 
sixty.  In  emergency,  those  liable  to  service  would  be 
called  in  this  order.  The  period  of  service  is  three 
years.  Up  to  the  present  service  has  been  voluntary, 
and  the  period  of  drill  lasts  sixteen  days.  Except  for 
fishing  patrols  and  insignificant  cruisers,  Canada  has 


DEFENSE  289 

no  marine  force,  absolutely  none,  though  she  can 
requisition  the  big  merchant  liners  which  she  subsi- 
dizes. Canada  has  an  excellent  military  school  in 
Kingston  and  a  course  of  instruction  at  Quebec,  but 
the  majority  of  graduates  from  these  centers  go  into 
service  in  the  British  army  simply  because  there  is  no 
scope  for  them  in  their  own  land.  At  Esquimalt  off 
Victoria,  British  Columbia,  and  at  Halifax,  Nova 
Scotia,  before  the  outbreak  of  the  present  war,  were 
Imperial  naval  stations ;  but  these  were  being  reduced 
to  a  minimum.  Perhaps  to  these  defenders  should  be 
added  some  thirty  thousand  juvenile  cadets  trained  in 
the  public  schools,  but  if  one  is  to  set  down  facts  not 
fictions,  much  of  the  training  of  the  volunteers  resolves 
itself  into  a  yearly  picnic.  One  wonders  on  what 
Canada  is  pinning  her  faith  in  security  from  attack  in 
case  disaster  should  come  to  the  British  navy. 
Whether  Canada  is  conscious  of  it  or  not,  her  greatest 
defense  is  in  the  virility  of  her  manhood.  Her  men 
are  neither  professorial  nor  an  office  type.  They  are 
big  outdoor  men  who  shoot  well  because  they  have  shot 
from  boyhood  and  lived  a  life  in  the  open.  All  this, 
however,  is  not  national  defense.  It  is  unused  but 
splendid  material  for  national  defense. 

Up  to  the  outbreak  of  the  present  war  Canada  has 
not  spent  ten  million  a  year  on  national  defense. 
That  is — for  the  security  of  peace  for  a  century,  she 
has  spent  less  than  one  dollar  and  fifty  cents  per  head 


290     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

a  year.  A  year  ago  naval  bills  were  rejected.  To-day 
there  are  few  people  in  Canada  who  would  not  ac- 
knowledge that  Canada  is  spending  too  little  on  de- 
fense. Stirred  profoundly  but,  as  is  the  British  way, 
saying  httle,  the  Dominion  is  setting  herself  in  ear- 
nest to  the  big  new  problem.  To  the  European  War, 
Canada  has  sent  sixty  thousand  men;  and  she  has 
promised  one  hundred  thousand  more.  A  nation  that 
can  unpreparedly  deliver  on  such  promises  to  the  drop 
of  the  hat  can  take  care  of  her  defense,  and  that  may 
be  Canada's  next  national  job. 

Would  any  power  have  an  object  in  crippling 
Canada.''  The  question  is  answered  best  by  another. 
If  Suez  were  cut  off  and  Canada  were  cut  off,  where 
would  England  look  for  her  food  supply  .f*  And  if  it 
were  to  the  advantage  of  a  hostile  power  to  cripple 
Canada,  could  she  be  conquered.?  Any  one  familiar 
with  Canada  will  answer  without  a  moment's  hesita- 
tion. She  could  be  attacked.  Her  coastal  cities  could 
be  laid  waste  as  the  cities  of  Belgium.  To  reach  the 
interior  of  Canada,  an  enemy  must  do  one  of  three 
things,  all  next  to  impossible :  penetrate  the  St.  Law- 
rence— ^a  treacherous  current — for  a  thousand  miles 
exposed  to  submarine  and  mine  and  attack  from  each 
side;  cross  the  United  States  and  so  violate  American 
sovereignty ;  cross  the  Rockies  to  reach  inland.  Any 
one  of  these  feats  is  as  impossible  as  the  conquest  of 


DEFENSE  291 

Switzerland  or  the  Scottish  Highlands.  Canada  could 
be  attacked  and  laid  waste;  she  could  be  financially 
ruined  by  attack  and  set  back  fifty  years  in  her  prog- 
ress; but  she  could  no  more  be  conquered  than  Na- 
poleon conquered  Russia.  The  conquest  would  be  at  a 
cost  to  destroy  the  conqueror,  and  the  conqueror  could 
no  more  stay  than  Napoleon  stayed  in  Moscow.  Can- 
ada has  a  vast,  an  illimitable  back  country — the  area 
of  all  Russia;  and  to  the  lakes  and  wild  rivers  and 
mountain  passes  of  that  country  her  people  are  bom 
and  bred.  To  her  climate  her  people  are  born  and 
bred.  The  climate  would  take  care  of  the  rest.  You 
can't  exactly  despatch  motors  and  motor  guns  down 
swamps  for  a  hundred  miles  and  over  cataracts  and 
through  mountain  passes  on  the  perpendicular.  Can- 
ada's back  country  is  her  perpetual  city  of  refuge. 
Nevertheless,  the  day  of  dependence  on  false  security 
is  past.  National  status  implies  national  defense,  and 
at  time  of  writing  the  indications  are  that  the  whole 
military  system  of  the  Dominion  will  be  put  on  a  new 
basis,  training  to  patriotism  and  defense  and  service 
from  the  public  school  up  through  the  university. 

"Then  what  becomes  of  your  co-eds  and  woman 
movement?"  a  militarist  asked. 

The  question  can  be  answered  in  the  words  of  a 
great  doctor — more  men  die  on  the  field  of  battle  from 
lack  of  women  nurses  than  ever  die  from  the  bullet  of 


THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

the  enemy.  The  time  seems  to  have  come  for  woman's 
place  on  the  firing  hne.  That  womanhood  which  gives 
of  life  to  create  life  now  claims  the  right  to  go  out  on 
the  field  of  danger  to  conserve  and  protect  life ;  and  in 
the  embodiment  of  military  training  in  public  educa- 
tion that,  too,  may  be  part  of  Canada's  new  national 
defense. 

When  an  admiral's  fleet  is  sunk  within  ten  days'  sail 
of  Victoria  and  Vancouver,  Laurier's  naval  policy  to 
build  war  vessels,  and  Borden's  to  contribute  to  their 
purchase  for  service  in  the  British  Navy  take  on 
different  aspect  to  Canada ;  and  the  Dominion  enters  a 
new  era  in  her  development,  as  one  of  the  dominant 
powers  in  the  North  Atlantic  and  the  North  Pacific. 
That  is — she  must  prepare  to  enter;  or  sit  back  the 
helpless  Korea  of  America.  A  country  with  a  billion 
dollars  of  commerce  a  year  to  defend  cuts  economy 
down  to  the  danger  line  when  she  spends  not  one  per 
cent,  of  the  value  of  her  foreign  commerce  to  protect 
it.  Like  the  United  States,  Canada  has  been  inclined 
to  sit  back  detached  from  world  entanglements  and 
perplexities.  That  day  has  passed  for  Canada.  She 
must  take  her  place  and  defend  her  place  or  lose  her 
identity  as  a  nation.  The  awakening  has  gone  over 
Canada  in  a  wave.  One  awaits  to  see  what  will  come 
of  it. 

Much,  of  course,  depends  upon  the  outcome  of  the 
great  war.     If  Britain  and  her  allies  triumph — and 


DEFENSE  293 

particularly  if  peace  brings  partial  disarmament — 
the  urgency  of  preparation  on  Canada's  part  will  be 
lessened.  But  should  Germany  win  or  the  duel  be  a 
draw,  then  may  Canada  well  gird  up  her  loins  and  look 
to  her  safety. 


CHAPTER  XVII 


THE  DOMAIN  OF  THE  NOETH 


Canada  does  not  like  any  reference  to  her  fur  trade 
as  a  national  occupation.  Of  course,  it  is  no  longer 
a  national  occupation.  It  occupies,  perhaps,  two 
thousand  whites  and  it  may  be  twenty  or  thirty  thou- 
sand Indians.  More  Indians  in  Canada  earn  their 
living  farming  the  reserves  than  catching  fur,  but 
the  Indians  north  of  Athabasca  and  Churchill  and 
in  Labrador  must  always  earn  their  living  fur  hunt- 
ing. Of  them  there  is  no  census,  but  they  hardly  ex- 
ceed thirty  thousand  all  told.  The  treaty  Indians 
on  reserves  now  number  a  hundred  thousand.  Yet, 
though  only  two  thousand  whites  are  fur-trading  in 
Canada,  no  interpretation  of  Canadian  life  is  com- 
plete without  reference  to  that  far  domain  of  the 
North,  where  the  hunter  roams  in  loneliness,  and  the 
night  lights  whip  unearthly  through  still  frosty  air, 
and  no  sound  breaks  leagueless  silence  but  the  rifle 
shot,  crackle  of  frost  or  the  call  of  the  wolf  pack. 

It  will  be  recalled  that  Canada's  first  settlers  came 
294 


THE    DOMAIN    OF    THE    NORTH     295 

in  two  main  currents  from  two  idealistic  motives.  The 
French  came  to  convert  the  Indians,  not  to  found 
empire,  and  the  Enghsh  Loyalists  came  from  the 
promptings  of  their  convictions.  Both  streams  of 
settlers  came  from  idealistic  motives,  but  both  had  to 
live,  and  they  did  it  at  first  by  fur  hunting.  Jean 
Ba'tiste,  the  Frenchman,  who  might  have  been  a  cour- 
tier when  he  came,  promptly  doffed  court  trappings 
and  donned  moccasins  and  exchanged  a  soldier's  saber 
for  a  camp  frying-pan  and  kept  pointing  his  canoe 
up  the  St.  Lawrence  till  he  had  threaded  every  river 
and  lake  from  Tadousac  to  Hudson  Bay  and  the 
Rockies.  It  was  the  pursuit  of  the  little  beaver  that 
paid  the  piper  for  all  the  discovering  and  exploring 
of  Canada.  When  John  Bull  came — also  in  pursuit 
of  ideals — he,  too,  in  a  more  prosperous  way  promptly 
exchanged  the  pursuit  of  ideals  for  the  pursuit  of 
the  little  beaver.  It  was  the  little  beaver  that  led  the 
way  for  Radisson,  for  La  Salle,  for  La  Verandrye, 
for  MacKenzie,  for  Fraser,  for  Peter  Skene  Ogden, 
from  the  St.  Lawrence  to  the  Columbia,  from  the 
Athabasca  to  the  Sacramento. 

While  all  this  is  of  the  past,  the  heritage  of  a  fur- 
hunting  ancestry  has  entered  into  the  very  blood  and 
brawn  and  brain  of  Canada  in  a  kind  of  iron  daunt- 
lessness  that  makes  for  manhood.  Some  of  her  great- 
est leaders — like  Strathcona  and  MacKenzie — have 
been  known  as  "Men  of  the  North" ;  and  whether  they 


296     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

have  fur-traded  or  not,  nearly  all  those  "Men  of  the 
North"  who  have  made  their  mark  have  had  the  iron 
dauntlessness  of  the  hunter  in  their  blood.  It  is  a 
sort  of  tonic  from  the  out-of-doors,  like  the  ozone 
you  breathe,  which  fills  body  and  soul  with  zest.  Can- 
ada is  sensitive  to  any  reference  to  her  fur  trade  for 
fear  the  world  regard  her  as  a  perpetual  fur  domain. 
Her  northern  zones  are  a  perpetual  fur  domain — we 
may  as  well  acknowledge  that — ^they  can  never  be 
anything  else ;  and  Canada  should  serve  notice  on  the 
softer  races  of  the  world  that  she  does  not  want  them. 
They  can  stand  up  neither  to  her  climate  nor  to  her 
measure  of  a  man,  but  far  from  cause  of  regret,  this 
is  a  thing  for  gratulation.  Canada  can  never  be  an 
overcrowded  land,  where  soft  races  crowd  for  room, 
like  slugs  under  a  board.  She  will  always  have  her 
spacious  domain  of  the  North — a  perpetual  fur  pre- 
serve, a  perpetual  hunting  ground,  where  dauntless 
spirits  will  venture  to  match  themselves  against  the 
powers  of  death;  and  from  that  North  will  ever 
emerge  the  type  of  man  who  masters  life. 


n 


The  last  chapter  of  the  fur  trade  has  not  been 
written — as  many  assert.  The  oldest  industry  of 
mankind,  the  most  heroic  and  protective  against  the 
elements — against  Fenris  and  Loki  and  all  those  Spir- 


THE    DOMAIN    OF    THE    NORTH     297 

Its  of  Evil  with  which  northern  myth  has  personified 
Cold — fur  hunting,  fur-trading,  will  last  long  as  man 
lasts.  We  are  entering,  not  on  the  extermination  of 
fur,  but  on  a  new  cycle  of  smaller  furs.  In  the  days 
when  mink  went  begging  at  eighty  cents,  mink  was 
not  fashionable.  Mink  is  fashionable  to-day;  hence 
the  absurd  and  fabulous  prices.  Long  ago,  when 
ermine  as  miniver — the  garb  of  nobility — was  fash- 
ionable and  exclusive,  it  commanded  fabulous  prices. 
Radicalism  abolished  the  exclusive  garb  of  royalty, 
and  ermine  fell  to  four  cents  a  pelt,  advanced  to 
twenty-five  cents  and  has  sold  at  one  dollar.  To-day, 
mink  is  the  fashion,  and  the  httle  mink  is  pursued; 
but  to-morrow  fashion  will  veer  with  the  caprices  of 
the  wind.  Some  other  fur  will  come  into  favor,  and 
the  little  mink  will  have  a  chance  to  multiply  as  the 
ermine  has  multiplied. 

In  spite  of  the  cry  of  the  end  of  fur,  more  furs  are 
marketed  in  the  world  than  ever  before  in  the  history 
of  the  race — forty  million  dollars'  worth ;  twenty  mil- 
lions of  which  are  handled  in  New  York  and  Chicago 
and  St.  Louis  and  St.  Paul ;  some  five  millions  passing 
through  Edmonton  and  Winnipeg  and  Montreal  and 
Quebec;  three  millions  for  home  consumption,  two 
millions  plus  for  export.  Some  years  ago  I  went 
through  all  the  Minutes  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Com- 
pany in  London  from  1670  to  1824  and  have  tran- 
scripts of  those  Minutes  now  in  my  library.     In  not 


298     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

a  single  year  did  the  fur  record  exceed  half  a  million 
dollars'  worth.  Compare  that  to  the  American  traffic 
to-day  of  twenty  millions,  or  to  the  three  and  four 
hundred  thousand  dollar  cargoes  that  each  of  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Company  and  Revillons'  ships  bears 
to  Europe  from  Canada  yearly. 

"How  much  can  a  good  Indian  hunter  make  In  a 
season?"  I  asked  a  fur-trader  of  the  Northwest,  be- 
cause In  nearly  all  accounts  written  about  furs,  you 
read  a  wail  of  reproach  at  milady  for  wearing  furs 
when  trapping  entails  such  hardship  and  poverty  on 
the  part  of  the  hunter. 

"A  good  hunter  easily  earns  six  hundred  dollars  or 
seven  hundred  dollars  a  winter  if  he  will  go  out  and 
not  hang  around  the  minute  he  gets  a  little  ahead. 
It  takes  from  three  thousand  dollars  to  four  thousand 
dollars  to  outfit  a  small  free-trader  to  go  up  North  on 
his  own  account.  This  stock  he  will  turn  over  three  or 
four  times  at  a  profit  of  one  hundred  per  cent,  on 
the  supplies.  For  example,  ten  dollars  cash  will  buy 
a  good  black  otter  up  North.  In  trade,  it  will  cost 
from  twelve  dollars  to  fifteen  dollars.  On  the  articles 
of  trade,  the  profit  will  be  fifty  per  cent.  The  otter 
will  sell  down  at  Edmonton  for  from  twenty  dollars  to 
thirty  dollars.  It's  the  same  of  muskrat.  At  the 
beginning  of  the  season  when  the  kits  are  plentiful 
and  small,  the  trader  pays  nine  cents  for  them  up 
North.     Down  at  the  fur  market  he  will  get  from 


THE    DOMAIN   OF   THE    NORTH     299 

twenty-five  to  sixty  cents  for  them,  according  to  size. 
There  were  one  hundred  and  thirty-two  thousand 
muskrat  came  to  one  firm  of  traders  alone  in  Edmon- 
ton one  year,  which  they  will  sell  at  an  advance  of 
fifty  per  cent." 

"How  much  fur  comes  yearly  to  Edmonton?"  I 
asked  an  Edmonton  trader.  If  you  look  at  the  map 
you  will  see  that  Edmonton  is  the  jumping  oif  place 
to  three  of  the  greatest  fur  fields  of  North  America 
— down  MacKenzie  River  to  the  Arctic,  up  Peace 
River  to  the  mountain  hinterland  between  the  Colum- 
bia and  the  Yukon,  east  through  Athabasca  Lake  to 
the  wild  barren  land  inland  from  Churchill  and  Hud- 
son Bay. 

"Well,  we  can  easily  calculate  that.  I  know  about 
how  much  is  brought  in  to  each  of  the  traders  there." 

I  took  pencil  while  he  gave  me  the  names.  It 
totaled  up  to  six  hundred  thousand  dollars'  worth  for 
1908.  When  you  consider  that  in  its  palmiest  old 
days  of  exclusive  monopoly  the  Hudson's  Bay  Com- 
pany never  sold  more  than  half  a  million  dollars' 
worth  of  furs  a  year,  this  total  for  Edmonton  alone 
does  not  sound  like  a  scarcity  of  furs. 

HI 

The  question  may  be  asked,  do  not  these  large  fig- 
ures presage  the  hunting  to  extinction  of  fur-bearing 
animals  ?    I  do  not  think  so. 


300     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

Take  a  map  of  the  northern  fur  country.  Take  a 
good  look  at  it — not  just  a  Pullman  car  glance.  The 
Canadian  government  has  again  and  again  advertised 
thousands,  hundreds  of  thousands,  millions  of  square 
miles  of  free  land.  Latitudinally,  that  is  perfectly 
true.  Wheat-wise,  it  isn't.  When  you  go  one  hun- 
dred miles  north  of  Saskatchewan  River  (barring 
Peace  River  in  sections)  you  are  in  a  climate  that  will 
grow  wheat  all  right — splendid  wheat,  the  hardest 
and  finest  in  the  world.  That  is,  twenty  hours  of 
sunlight — not  daylight  but  sunlight — force  growth 
rapidly  enough  to  escape  late  spring  and  early  fall 
frosts ;  but  the  plain  fact  of  the  matter  is,  wheat  land 
does  not  exist  far  north  of  the  Saskatchewan  except  in 
sections  along  Peace  River.  What  does  exist.''  Cat- 
aracts countless — Churchill  River  is  one  succession  of 
cataracts ;  vast  rivers ;  lakes  unmapped,  links  and 
chains  of  lakes  by  which  you  can  go  from  the  Sas- 
katchewan to  the  Arctic  without  once  lifting  your 
canoe;  quaking  muskegs — areas  of  amber  stagnant 
water  full  of  what  the  Indians  call  mermaid's  hair, 
lined  by  ridges  of  moss  and  sand  overgrown  with 
coarse  goose  grass  and  "the  reed  that  grows  like  a 
tree,"  muskrat  reed,  a  tasseled  corn-like  tufted  growth 
sixteen  feet  high — areas  of  such  muskeg  mile  upon 
mile.  I  traversed  one  such  region  above  Cumberland 
Lake  seventy  miles  wide  by  three  hundred  long  where 
you  could  not  find  solid  camping  ground  the  size  of 


THE    DOMAIN    OF    THE    NORTH     301 

your  foot.  What  did  we  do?  That  Is  where  the  uses 
of  a  really  expert  guide  came  in ;  we  moored  our 
canoe  among  the  willows,  cut  willows  enough  to  keep 
feet  from  sinking,  spread  oilcloth  and  rugs  over  this, 
erected  the  tents  over  all,  tying  the  guy  ropes  to  the 
canoe  thwarts  and  willows,  as  the  ground  would  not 
hold  the  tent  pegs. 

It  doesn't  sound  as  if  such  regions  would  ever  be 
overrun  by  settlement — does  it?  Now  look  at  your 
map,  seventy  miles  north  of  Saskatchewan!  From 
the  northwest  corner  up  by  Klondike  to  the  southeast 
corner  down  in  Labrador  is  a  distance  of  more  than 
three  thousand  miles.  From  the  south  to  north  is  a 
distance  of  almost  two  thousand  miles.  I  once  asked 
a  guide  with  a  truly  city  air — it  might  almost  have 
been  a  Harvard  air — if  these  distances  were  "as  the 
crow  flies."  He  gave  me  a  look  that  I  would  not  like 
to  have  a  guide  give  me  too  often — he  might  maroon 
a  fool  on  one  of  those  swamp  areas. 

"There  ain*t  no  distances  as  the  crow  flies  in  this 
country,"  he  answered.  "You  got  to  travel  'cording 
as  the  waters  collect  or  the  ice  goes  out." 

Well,  here  is  your  country,  three  thousand  by  two 
thousand  miles,  a  great  fur  preserve.  What  exists  in 
It?  Very  little  wood,  and  that  small.  Undoubtedly 
some  minerals.  What  else  exists?  A  very  sparse 
population  of  Indians,  whose  census  no  man  knows, 
for  it  has  never  been  taken ;  but  It  Is  a  pretty  safe 


302     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

guess  to  say  there  are  not  thirty  thousand  Indians 
all  told  in  the  north  fur  country.  I  put  this  guess 
tentatively  and  should  be  glad  of  information  from 
any  one  in  a  position  to  guess  closer.  I  have  asked 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  and  I  have  asked  Revil- 
lons  how  many  white  hunters  and  traders  they  think 
are  in  the  fur  country  of  the  North.  I  have  never 
met  any  one  who  placed  the  number  in  the  North  at 
more  than  two  thousand.  Spread  two  thousand  white 
hunters  with  ten  thousand  Indians — for  of  the  total 
Indian  population  two-thirds  are  women  and  children 
— over  an  area  the  size  of  two-thirds  of  Europe — I 
ask  you  frankly,  do  you  think  they  are  going  to  ex- 
terminate the  game  very  fast?  Remember  the  climate 
of  the  North  takes  care  of  her  own.  White  men  can 
stand  only  so  many  years  of  that  lonely  cold,  and  then 
they  have  "to  come  out"  or  they  dwarf  mentally  and 
degenerate. 

Take  a  single  section  of  this  great  northern  fur 
preserve — Labrador,  which  I  visited  some  years  ago. 
In  area  Labrador  is  530,000  square  miles,  two  and  a 
half  times  the  size  of  France,  twice  the  size  of  Ger- 
many, twice  the  size  of  Austria-Hungary.  Statistical 
books  set  the  population  down  at  four  thousand ;  but 
the  Moravian  missionaries  there  told  me  that  includ- 
ing the  Eskimo  who  come  down  the  coast  in  summer 
and  the  fishermen  who  come  up  the  coast  in  summer 
the  total  population  was  probably  seventeen  thousand. 


THE    DOMAIN    OF    THE    NORTH     303 

Now  Labrador  is  one  of  the  finest  game  preserves  in 
the  world.  On  its  rocky  hills  and  watery  upper  bar- 
rens where  settlement  can  never  come  are  to  be  found 
silver  fox — the  finest  in  the  world,  so  fine  that  the 
Revillons  have  estabhshed  a  fur-breeding  post  for 
silver  fox  on  one  of  the  islands — cross  fox  almost  as 
fine  as  silver,  black  and  red  fox,  the  best  otter  in  the 
world,  the  finest  marten  in  America,  bear,  very  fine 
Norway  lynx,  fine  ermine,  rabbit  or  hare  galore,  very 
fine  wolverine,  fisher,  muskrat,  coarse  harp  seal,  wolf, 
caribou,  beaver,  a  few  mink.  Is  it  common  sense  to 
think  the  population  of  a  few  thousands  can  hunt  out 
a  fur  empire  here  the  size  of  two  Germanies?  Re- 
member it  was  not  the  hunter  who  exterminated  the 
buffalo  and  the  beaver  and  the  seal  and  the  otter! 
The  poacher  destroyed  one  group  of  sea  furs ;  the 
railway  and  the  farm  supplanted  the  other.  West  of 
Mackenzie  River  and  north  of  British  Columbia  is  a 
game  region  almost  similar  to  Labrador  in  its  furred 
habitat,  with  the  exception  that  the  western  preserve 
is  warmer  and  more  wooded.  Northward  from  On- 
tario is  another  hinterland  which  from  its  very  nature 
must  always  be  a  great  hunting  ground.  IMinerals 
exist — as  the  old  French  traders  well  knew  and  the 
latter-day  discoveries  of  Cobalt  prove — and  there  is 
also  heavy  timber ;  but  north  of  the  Great  Clay  Belt, 
between  the  Clay  Belt  and  the  Bay,  lies  the  impene- 
trable   and — I    think — indestructible    game    ground. 


304.     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

Swamp  and  rock  will  prevent  agricultural  settlement 
but  will  provide  an  ideal  fur  preserve  similar  in  cli- 
mate to  Labrador. 

Traveling  with  Indian  guides,  it  is  always  a  matter 
of  marvel  and  admiration  to  me  how  the  fur  companies 
have  bred  into  the  very  blood  for  generations  the 
careful  nurture  of  all  game.  At  one  place  canoeing 
on  Saskatchewan  we  heard  of  a  huge  black  bear  that 
had  been  molesting  some  new  ranches.  "No  take 
now,'*  said  the  Indian.  "Him  fur  no  good  now." 
Though  we  might  camp  on  bare  rocks  and  the  fire 
lay  dead  ash,  it  was  the  extra  Indian  paddler  who 
invariably  went  back  to  spatter  it  out.  You  know 
the  white's  innate  love  for  a  roaring  log  fire  in  front 
of  the  camp  at  night?  The  Indian  calls  that  "a-no- 
good-whitemen-fire-scare-away-game." 

Now  take  another  look  at  the  map.  Where  the 
Saskatchewan  makes  a  great  bend  three  hundred  miles 
northeast  of  Prince  Albert,  it  is  no  longer  a  river — it 
is  a  vast  muskeg  of  countless  still  amber  water  chan- 
nels not  twice  the  width  of  your  canoe  and  quaking 
silt  islands  of  sand  and  goose  grass — ideal,  hidden 
and  almost  impenetrable  for  small  game.  Always 
muskeg  marks  the  limit  of  big  game  and  the  begin- 
ning of  tlie  ground  of  the  little  fellows — ^waupoos, 
the  rabbit;  and  musquash,  the  muskrat;  and  sak- 
wasew,  the  mink ;  and  nukik,  the  otter ;  and  wuchak  or 
pekan,  the  fisher.     It  is  a  safe  wager  that  the  profits 


THE   DOMAIN    OF    THE    NORTH     305 

on  the  millions  upon  millions  of  little  pelts — ^hundreds 
of  thousands  of  muskrat  are  taken  out  of  this  muskeg 
alone — exceed  by  a  hundredfold  the  profits  on  the 
larger  furs  of  beaver  and  silver  fox  and  bear  and 
wolf  and  cross  fox  and  marten. 

Look  at  the  map  again!  North  of  Cumberland 
Lake  to  the  next  fur  post  is  a  trifling  run  of  two 
hundred  and  fifty  to  three  hundred  miles  by  dog- 
train  to  Lac  du  Brochet  or  Reindeer  Lake — more 
muskeg  cut  by  limestone  and  granite  ridges.  Here 
you  can  measure  four  hundred  miles  east  or  west  and 
not  get  out  of  the  muskeg  till  you  reach  Athabasca  on 
the  west  and  Hudson's  Bay  on  the  east.  North  of  Lac 
du  Brochet  is  a  straight  stretch  of  one  thousand  miles 
— nothing  but  rocks  and  cataracts  and  stunted  woods, 
"little  sticks"  the  Indians  call  them — and  sky-colored 
waters  in  links  and  chains  and  lakes  with  the  quaking 
muskeg  goose  grass  and  muskrat  reed,  cut  and  chis- 
eled and  trenched  by  the  amber  water  ways. 


IV 


If  you  think  there  is  any  danger  of  settlement  ever 
encroaching  on  the  muskegs  and  barrens,  come  with 
me  on  a  trip  of  some  weeks  to  the  south  end  of  this 
field. 

We  had  been  pulling  against  slack  water  all  day, 
water  so  slack  you  could  dip  your  hand  down  and  fail 


806    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

to  tell  which  way  the  current  ran.  Where  the  high  banks 
dropped  suddenly  to  such  a  dank  tangle  of  reeds,  brush 
wood,  windfall  and  timbers  drifted  fifteen  hundred 
miles  down  from  the  forests  of  the  Rocky  Mountains 
— such  a  tangle  as  I  have  never  seen  in  any  swamp  of 
the  South — ^the  skeleton  of  a  moose,  come  to  its  death 
by  a  jump  among  the  windfall,  marked  the  eastern 
limit  of  big  game ;  and  presently  the  river  was  lost — 
not  in  a  lake — but  in  a  swamp.  A  red  fox  came  scur- 
rying through  the  goose  grass,  sniifed  the  air,  looked 
at  us  and  ran  along  abreast  of  our  canoe  for  about  a 
mile,  evidently  scenting  the  bacon  of  the  tin  "grub 
box."  Muskrats  feed  on  the  bulb  of  the  tufted  "reed 
like  a  tree,"  sixteen  feet  high  on  each  side,  and  again 
and  again  little  kits  came  out  and  swam  in  the  ripple 
of  our  canoe.  Once  an  old  duck  performed  the  acro- 
batic feat  over  which  the  nature  and  anti-nature 
writers  have  been  giving  each  other  the  lie.  We  had 
come  out  of  one  long  amber  channel  to  be  confronted 
by  three  openings  exactly  alike,  not  much  wider  than 
the  length  of  our  Klondike  canoe,  all  lined  by  the 
high  tufted  reed.  MacKenzie,  the  half-breed  rapids 
man,  had  been  telling  us  the  endless  Cree  legends  of 
Wa-sa-kee-chaulk,  the  Cree  Hiawatha,  and  his  Indian 
lore  of  stagnant  waters  now  lured  him  into  steering  us 
to  one  of  the  side  channels.  We  were  not  expected. 
An  old  mother  duck  was  directly  across  our  path 
teaching  some  twenty-two  little  black  hobbling  downy 


THE    DOMAIN    OF    THE    NORTH     307 

babies  how  to  swim.  With  a  cry  that  shrieked  "Leg  it 
— leg  it"  plain  as  a  quack  could  speak  and  which  sent 
the  little  fellows  scuttling,  half  swim,  half  run,  the  old 
mother  flung  herself  over  on  her  back  not  a  paddle's 
length  ahead  of  us,  dipped,  dived,  came  up  again  just 
at  our  bow  and  flopped  broken-winged  over  the  water 
ahead  of  us  near  enough  almost  to  be  caught  by  hand ; 
but  when  you  stretched  out  your  hand,  the  crafty  lady 
dipped  and  dived  and  came  up  broken-winged  again. 

"You  old  fool,"  said  our  head  man,  "your  wing  is 
no  more  broken  than  mine  is.  We're  not  going  to  hurt 
your  babies.    Shut  up  there  and  stop  that  lying." 

Spite  of  which  the  old  duck  kept  up  her  pantomime 
of  deceit  for  more  than  a  mile;  when  she  suddenly 
sailed  up  over  our  heads  back  to  her  hidden  babies,  a 
very  Boadicea  of  an  old  duck  girl.  When  we  drew  in 
for  nooning,  wild  geese  honked  over  our  heads  near 
enough  to  be  hit  by  the  butt  of  a  gun.  Drift  chips, 
lodged  in  the  goose  grass,  kindled  fire  for  kettle,  but 
oilcloth  had  to  be  spread  before  you  could  get  footing 
ashore.  I  began  to  wonder  what  happened  as  to  re- 
pairs when  canoes  ripped  over  a  snag  in  this  kind  of 
region,  and  that  brought  up  the  story  of  a  fur- 
trader's  wife  in  another  muskeg  region  north  of  Lac 
La  Ronge  up  toward  Churchill  River,  who  was  in  a 
canoe  that  ripped  a  hole  clean  the  size  of  a  man's  fist. 
Quick  as  a  flash,  the  head  man  was  into  the  tin  grub 
box  and  had  clanked  on  a  cake  of  butter      T'he  cold 


308     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

water  hardened  it,  and  that  repair  carried  them  along 
to  the  first  birch  tree  affording  a  new  strip  of  bark. 

Where  an  occasional  ridge  of  limestone  cut  the 
swamp  we  could  hear  the  laught*.  -  and  the  glee  of  the 
Indian  children  playing  "wild  goose"  among  the  trem- 
bling black  poplars  and  whispering  birches,  and 
where  we  landed  at  the  Indian  camps  we  found  the 
missionaries  out  with  the  hunters.  In  fact,  even  the 
nuns  go  haying  and  moose  hunting  with  the  Indian 
families  to  prevent  lapses  to  barbarism. 

Again  and  again  we  passed  cached  canoes,  provi- 
sions stuck  up  on  sticks  above  the  reach  of  animal  ma- 
rauders— testimony  to  the  honesty  of  the  passing  In- 
dian hunters,  which  the  best  policed  civilized  eastern 
city  can  not  boast  of  its  denizens. 

"I've  gone  to  the  Rockies  by  way  of  Peace  River 
dozens  of  times,"  declared  the  head  of  one  of  the  big 
fur  companies,  "and  left  five  hundred  dollars'  worth 
of  provisions  cached  in  trees  to  feed  us  on  our  way  out, 
and  when  we  came  that  same  way  six  months  after- 
ward we  never  found  one  pound  stolen,  though  I  re- 
member one  winter  when  the  Indians  who  were  passing 
and  repassing  under  the  food  in  those  trees  were  starv- 
ing owing  to  the  rabbit  famine." 

In  winter  this  region  is  traversed  by  dog-train  along 
the  ice — a  matter  of  five  hundred  miles  to  Lac  du 
Brochet  and  back,  or  six  hundred  to  Prince  Albert 
and  back.    "Oh,  no,  we're  not  far,"  said  a  lonely-faced 


THE    DOMAIN    OF    THE    NORTH     309 

Cambridge  graduate  fur-trader  to  me.  "When  my  lit- 
tle boy  took  sick  last  winter,  I  had  to  go  only  fifty-five 
miles.  There  happened  to  be  a  doctor  in  the  lumber 
camp  back  on  the  Ridge." 

But  even  winter  travel  is  not  all  easy  in  a  fifty-be- 
low-zero climate  where  you  can't  find  sticks  any  larger 
than  your  finger  to  kindle  night  fire.  I  know  the  story 
of  one  fur-trader  who  was  running  along  behind  his 
dog  sleigh  in  this  section.  He  had  become  overheated 
running  and  had  thrown  his  coat  and  cap  across 
the  sleigh,  wearing  only  flannel  shirt,  fur  gauntlets, 
corduroy  trousers  and  moccasins.  At  a  bend  in  the 
iced  channel  he  came  on  a  pack  of  mangy  coyotes. 
Before  he  had  thought  he  had  sicked  the  dogs  on 
them.  With  a  yell  they  were  off  out  of  sight  amid  the 
goose  grass  and  reeds  with  the  sleigh  and  his  gar- 
ments. Those  reeds,  remember,  are  sixteen  feet  high, 
stiff  as  broom  corn  and  hard  on  moccasins  as  stubble 
would  be  on  bare  feet.  To  make  matters  worse,  a 
heavy  snowstorm  came  on.  The  wind  was  against  the 
direction  the  dogs  had  taken  and  the  man  hallooed 
himself  hoarse  without  an  answering  sound.  It  was 
two  o'clock  in  the  morning  before  the  wind  sank  and 
the  trader  found  his  dogs,  and  by  that  time  between 
sweat  and  cold  his  shirt  had  frozen  to  a  board. 

Such  a  thing  as  an  out  and  out  pagan  hardly  exists 
among  the  Indians  of  the  North.  They  are  all  more 
or  less  Christian  with  a  curious  minghng  of  pagan 


310     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

superstition  with  the  new  faith.  The  Indian  voy- 
ageurs  may  laugh  but  they  all  do  it — make  offerings 
of  tobacco  to  the  Granny  Goddess  of  the  River  before 
setting  out.  In  vain  we  threw  biscuit  and  orange  peel 
and  nuts  to  the  perverse-tempered  deity  supposed  to 
preside  at  the  bottom  of  those  amber  waters.  The 
winds  were  contrary,  the  waters  slack,  sluggish,  dead, 
no  responsive  gurgle  and  flap  of  laughter  and  life  to 
the  slow  keel. 

One  channel  but  opened  on  another.  Even  the  lime- 
stone ridges  had  vanished  far  to  rear,  and  the  stillness 
of  night  fell  with  such  a  flood  of  sunset  light  as 
Turner  never  dreamed  in  his  wildest  color  intoxica- 
tions. There  would  be  the  wedge-shaped  line  of  the 
wild  geese  against  a  flaming  sky — a  far  honk — ^then 
stillness.  Then  the  flackering  quacking  call  of  a 
covey  of  ducks  with  a  hum  of  wings  right  over  our 
shoulders ;  then  no  sound  but  the  dip  of  our  paddles 
and  the  drip  and  ripple  of  the  dead  waters  among  the 
feeds.  Suddenly  there  lifted  against  the  lonely  red 
sunset  sky — a  lob  stick — a  dark  evergreen  stripped 
below  the  tip  to  mark  some  Indian  camping  place,  or 
vow,  or  sacred  memory.  We  steered  for  it.  A  little 
flutter  of  leaves  like  a  clapping  of  hands  marked  land 
enough  to  support  black  poplars,  and  we  rounded  a 
crumbly  sand  bank  just  in  time  to  see  the  seven-banded 
birch  canoe  of  a  little  old  hunter,  Sam  Ba'tiste  Buck 
• — eighty  years  old  he  was — squatting  in  the  bottom  of 


THE    DOMAIN    OF    THE    NORTH     311 

the  birch  canoe,  ragged  almost  to  nakedness,  bare  of 
feet,  gray-headed,  nearly  toothless  but  happier  than 
an  emperor — ^the  first  living  being  we  had  seen  for  a 
week  in  the  muskegs.  We  camped  together  that  night 
on  the  sandbars — trading  Sam  Ba'tiste  flour  and 
matches  for  a  couple  of  ducks.  He  had  been  storm- 
stead  camping  in  the  goose  grass  for  three  days.  Do 
you  think  he  was  to  be  pitied?  Don't!  Three  days' 
hunting  will  lay  up  enough  meat  for  Sam  for  the  win- 
ter. In  the  winter  he  will  snare  some  small  game,  while 
mink  and  otter  and  muskrat  skins  will  provide  him 
flour  and  clothes  from  the  fur-trader.  Each  of  Sam's 
sons  is  earning  seven  hundred  dollars  a  year  hunting 
big  game  on  the  rock  ridge  farther  north — more  than 
illiterate,  unskilled  men  earn  in  eastern  lands.  Then 
in  spring  Sam  will  emerge  from  his  cabin,  build  an- 
other birch  canoe  and  be  off  to  the  duck  and  wild 
geese  haunts.  When  we  paddled  away  in  the  morning, 
Sam  still  camped  on  the  sand  bank.  He  sat  squat  whit- 
tling away  at  kin-a-kin-ic,  or  the  bark  of  the  red  wil- 
low, the  hunter's  free  tobacco.  In  town  Sam  would  be 
poverty-stricken,  hungry,  a  beggar.  Here  he  is  a 
lord  of  his  lonely  watery  domain,  more  independent 
and  care-free  than  you  are — peace  to  his  aged  bones ! 
Another  night  coming  through  the  muskegs  we  lost 
ourselves.  We  had  left  our  Indian  at  the  fur  post  and 
trusted  to  follow  southwest  two  hundred  miles  to  the 
next  fur  post  by  the  sun,  but  there  was  no  sun, 


312     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

only  heavy  lead-colored  clouds  with  a  rolling  wind 
that  whipped  the  amber  waters  to  froth  and  flooded 
the  sand  banks.  If  there  was  any  current,  it  was 
reversed  by  the  wind.  We  should  have  thwarted 
the  main  muskeg  by  a  long  narrow  channel,  but  mis- 
took our  way  thinking  to  follow  the  main  river  by 
taking  the  broadest  opening.  It  led  us  into  a  lake 
seven  miles  across;  not  deep,  for  every  paddle  stroke 
tangled  into  the  long  water  weed  known  as  mermaid's 
hair  but  deep  enough  for  trouble  when  you  consider 
the  width  of  the  lake,  the  lack  of  dry  footing  the  width 
of  one's  hand,  and  the  fact  that  you  can't  offer  the 
gun'l  of  a  canoe  to  the  broadside  of  a  big  wave.  We 
scattered  our  dunnage  and  all  three  squatted  in  the 
bottom  to  prevent  the  rocking  of  the  big  canoe.  Then 
we  thwarted  and  tacked  and  quartered  to  the  billows 
for  a  half  day. 

Nightfall  found  us  back  in  the  channel  again  scud- 
ding before  thunder  and  a  hurricane  wind  looking  for 
a  camping  place.  It  had  been  a  back-breaking  pace 
all  day.  We  had  tried  to  find  relief  by  the  Indian's 
choppy  strokes  changing  every  third  dip  from  side  to 
side;  we  had  tried  the  white  man's  deep  long  pulling 
strokes ;  and  by  seven  in  the  evening  with  the  thunder 
rolling  behind  and  not  a  spot  of  dry  land  visible  the 
size  of  one's  foot,  backs  began  to  feel  as  if  they  might 
break  in  the  middle.  Our  canoe  and  dunnage  weighed 
close  on  seven  hundred  pounds.    Suddenly  we  shot  out 


THE    DOMAIN    OF    THE    NORTH     313 

of  the  amber  channel  into  a  shallow  lagoon  lined  on 
each  side  by  the  high  tufted  reeds,  but  the  reeds  were 
so  thin  we  could  see  through  them  to  lakes  on  each 
side.  A  whirr  above  our  heads  and  a  flock  of  teal  al- 
most touched  us  with  their  wings.  Simultaneously 
all  three  dropped  paddles — all  three  were  speechless. 
The  air  was  full  of  voices.  You  could  not  hear  your- 
self think.  We  lapped  the  canoe  close  in  hiding  to  the 
thin  lining  of  reeds.  I  asked,  "Have  those  little  sticks 
drifted  down  fifteen  hundred  miles  to  this  lagoon  of 
dead  water.'"' 

"Sticks,"  my  guide  repeated,  **it  isn't  sticks — it 
isn't  drift — it's  birds — it's  duck  and  geese — I  have 
never  seen  anything  like  it — I  have  lived  west  more 
than  twenty  years  and  I  never  heard  tell  of  anything 
— of  anything  like  it." 

Anything  like  it.?  I  had  lived  all  my  life  in  the 
West  and  I  had  never  heard  or  dreamed  any  oldest 
timer  tell  anjrthing  like  it !  For  seven  miles,  you  could 
not  have  laid  your  paddle  on  the  water  without  dis- 
turbing coveys  of  geese  and  duck,  geese  and  duck  of 
such  variety  as  I  have  never  seen  classified  or  named  in 
any  book  on  birds.  We  sat  very  still  behind  the  hid- 
ing of  reed  and  watched  and  watched.  We  couldn't 
talk.  We  had  lost  ourselves  in  one  of  the  secluded 
breeding  places  of  wild  fowl  in  the  North.  I  counted 
dozens  and  dozens  of  moult  nests  where  the  duck  had 
congregated  before  their  long  flight  south.  That  was 


314.     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

the  night  we  could  find  camping  ground  only  by  build- 
ing a  foundation  of  reeds  and  willows,  then  spreading 
oilcloth  on  top ;  and  all  night  our  big  tent  rocked  to  the 
wind ;  for  we  had  roped  it  to  the  thwarts  of  the  canoe. 
Next  day  when  we  reached  the  fur  post,  the  chief 
trader  told  us  any  good  hunter  could  fill  his  canoe — 
the  big,  white  banded,  gray  canoe  of  the  company,  not 
the  little,  seven  banded,  birch  craft — with  birds  to  the 
gun'l  in  two  hours'  shooting  on  that  lake. 

That  muskeg  is  only  one  of  thousands,  when  you 
go  seventy  miles  north  of  the  Saskatchewan,  sixty 
miles  east  of  Athabasca  Lake.  That  muskeg  and  its 
like,  covering  an  area  two-thirds  of  all  Europe,  is  the 
home  of  all  the  little  furs,  mink  and  muskrat  and 
fisher  and  otter  and  rabbit  and  ermine,  the  furs  that 
clothe — not  princes  and  millionaire,  who  buy  silver  fox 
and  sea  otter — but  you  and  me  and  the  rest  of  us  whose 
object  is  to  keep  warm,  not  to  show  how  much  we  can 
spend.  Out  of  that  one  muskeg  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  little  pelts  have  been  taken  since  1754  when 
Anthony  Hendry,  the  smuggler,  came  the  first  of  the 
fur-traders  inland  from  the  Bay.  And  the  game — 
save  in  the  year  of  the  unexplained  rabbit  pest — shows 
no  sign  of  diminishing. 

Does  it  sound  very  much  to  you  like  a  region  where 
the  settler  would  ultimately  drive  out  the  fur  trade.'' 
What  would  he  settle  on  ?  That  is  the  point.  Nature 
has  taken  good  care  that  climate  and  swamp  shall  erect 


THE    DOMAIN    OF    THE    NORTH     315 

an  everlasting  barrier  to  encroachment  on  her  game 
preserves. 

To  be  sure,  if  you  ask  a  fur-trader,  "How  are 
furs?"  he  will  answer,  "Poor — poorer  every  year." 
So  would  you  if  you  were  a  fur-trader  and  wanted  to 
keep  out  rivals.  I  have  never  known  a  fur-trader  who 
did  not  make  that  answer. 

To  be  sure,  seal  and  sea  otter,  beaver  and  buffalo 
have  been  almost  exterminated ;  but  even  to-day  if  the 
governments  of  the  world,  especially  Canada  and  the 
United  States,  would  pass  and  enforce  laws  prohibit- 
ing the  killing  of  a  single  buffalo  or  beaver,  seal  or  sea 
otter  for  fifty  years,  these  species  would  replenish 
themselves. 

"The  last  chapter  of  the  fur  trade  has  been  writ- 
ten?" Never!  The  oldest  industry  of  mankind  will 
last  as  long  as  mankind  lasts. 


I  read  also  that  "the  last  chapter  of  the  fur  romance 
has  been  written."  That  is  the  point  of  view  of  the 
man  who  spends  fifty  weeks  in  town  and  two  weeks  in 
the  wilds.  It  is  not  the  point  of  view  of  the  man  who 
spends  two  weeks  in  town  and  fifty  in  the  wilds ;  of  the 
man  who  goes  out  beyond  the  reach  of  law  into  strange 
realms  the  size  of  Russia  with  no  law  but  his  own  right 
arm,  no  defense  but  his  own  wit.    Though  I  have  writ- 


816    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

ten  history  of  the  Hudson*s  Bay  Company  straight 
from  their  own  Minutes  in  Hudson's  Bay  House,  Lon- 
don, I  could  write  more  of  the  romance  of  the  fur 
trade  right  in  the  present  year  than  has  ever  been 
penned  of  the  company  since  it  was  estabhshed  away 
back  in  the  year  1670. 

Space  permits  only  two  examples.  You  recall  the 
Cambridge  man  who  thought  it  a  short  distance  to  go 
only  fifty-five  miles  by  dog-train  for  a  doctor.  A  more 
cultured,  scholarly,  perfect  gentleman  I  have  never 
met  in  London  or  New  York.  Yet  when  I  met  his  wife, 
I  found  her  a  shy  little,  part-Indian  girl,  who  had  al- 
most to  be  dragged  in  to  meet  us.  That  spiritual  face 
— such  a  face  as  you  might  see  among  the  preachers 
of  Westminster  or  Oxford — and  the  little  shy  Indian 
girl-wife  and  the  children,  plainly  a  tlirow-back  to 
their  red-skin  ancestors,  not  to  the  Cambridge  pater- 
nity! What  was  the  explanation?  Where  was  the 
story  of  heartache  and  tragedy — I  asked  myself,  as 
we  stood  in  our  tent  door  watching  the  York  boat  come 
in  with  provisions  for  the  year  under  a  sky  of  such  di- 
aphanous northern  lights  as  leave  you  dumb  before 
their  beauty  and  their  splendor?  How  often  he  must 
have  stood  beneath  those  northern  lights  thinking  out 
the  heartbreak  that  has  no  end. 

I  did  not  learn  the  story  till  I  had  come  on  down  to 
civilization  and  town  again.  That  Cambridge  man 
had  come  out  from  England  flush  with  the  zeal  of  the 


THE    DOMAIN    OF    THE    NORTH     317 

saint  to  work  among  the  Indians.  In  the  Indian  school 
where  he  tauglit  he  had  met  his  Fate — the  thing  he 
probably  scouted — that  fragile  type  of  Indian  beauty 
ahnost  fawn-like  in  its  elusiveness,  pure  spirit  from  the 
very  prosaic  fact  that  the  seeds  of  mortal  disease  are 
already  snapping  the  ties  to  life.  It  is  a  type  you 
never  see  near  the  fur  posts.  You  have  to  go  to  the 
far  outer  encampments,  where  white  vices  have  not  pol- 
luted the  very  air.  He  fell  in  love.  What  was  he  to 
do.?  If  he  left  her  to  her  fate,  she  would  go  back  to 
the  inclement  roughness  of  tepee  life  mated  to  some 
Indian  hunter,  or  fall  victim  to  the  brutal  admiration 
of  some  of  those  white  sots  who  ever  seek  hiding  in  the 
very  wilderness.  He  married  her  and  had  of  course 
to  resign  his  position  as  teacher  in  the  school.  He 
took  a  position  with  the  company  and  lived  no  doubt 
in  such  happiness  as  only  such  a  spiritual  nature  could 
know ;  but  the  seeds  of  the  disease  which  gave  her  such 
unearthly  beauty  ripened.  She  died.  What  was  to 
become  of  the  children.''  If  he  sent  them  back  to  Eng- 
land, they  would  be  wretched  and  their  presence  would 
be  misunderstood.  If  he  left  them  with  her  relatives, 
they  would  grow  up  Indians.  If  he  kept  them  he  must 
have  a  mother  for  them,  so  he  married  another  trader's 
daughter — the  little  half-breed  girl — and  chained  him- 
self to  his  rock  of  Fate  as  fast  as  ever  martyr  was 
bound  in  Grecian  myth;  and  there  he  lives  to-day. 
The  mail  comes  in  only  once  in  three  months  in  sum- 


318     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

mer ;  only  once  in  six  in  winter.  He  is  the  only  white 
man  on  a  watery  island  two  hundred  miles  from  any- 
where except  when  the  lumbermen  come  to  the  Ridge, 
or  the  Indian  agent  arrives  with  the  treaty  money  once 
a  year. 

And  "the  last  chapter  of  the  fur  romance  has  been 
written"  ? 

"The  last  chapter  of  the  fur  romance"  will  not  have 
been  written  as  long  as  frost  and  muskeg  provide  a 
habitat  for  furtive  game,  and  strong  men  set  forth  to 
traverse  lone  places  with  no  defense  but  their  own 
valiant  spirit. 

The  other  example  is  of  a  man  known  to  every  fur 
buyer  of  St.  Louis  and  Chicago  and  St.  Paul — Mr. 
Hall,  the  chief  commissioner  of  furs  for  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Company.  I  wish  I  could  give  it  in  Mr.  Hall's 
own  words — in  the  slow  quiet  recital  of  the  man  who 
has  spent  his  life  amid  the  great  silent  verities,  up 
next  to  primordial  facts,  not  theorizing  and  profes- 
sionalizing and  discretionizing  and  generally  darken- 
ing counsel  by  words  without  knowledge.  He  was  a 
youth  somewhere  around  his  early  twenties,  and  he  was 
serving  the  company  at  Stuart  Lake  in  British  Co- 
lumbia— a  sort  of  American  Trossachs  on  a  colossal 
scale.  He  had  been  sent  eastward  with  a  party  to 
bring  some  furs  across  from  MacLeod  Lake  in  the 
most  heavily  wooded  mountains.  It  was  mid-winter. 
Fort  MacLeod  was  short  of  provisions.    On  their  way 


THE    DOMAIN   OF    THE    NORTH     319 

back  travel  proved  very  heavy  and  slow.  Snow  buried 
the  beaten  trail,  and  travel  off  it  plunged  men  and 
horses  through  snow  crust  into  a  criss-cross  tangle  of 
underbrush  and  windfall.  The  party  ran  out  of  food. 
It  was  thought  if  Hall,  the  youngest  and  lightest, 
could  push  ahead  on  snowshoes  to  Stuart  Lake,  he 
could  bring  out  a  rescue  party  with  food. 

He  set  off  without  horse  or  gun  and  with  only  a 
lump  of  tallow  in  his  pocket  as  food.  The  distance 
was  seventy-five  miles.  At  first  he  ran  on  winged  feet 
— feet  winged  with  hunger;  but  it  began  to  snow 
heavily  with  a  wind  that  beat  in  his  face  and  blew 
great  gusts  of  snow  pack  down  from  the  evergreen 
branches  overhead;  and  even  feet  winged  with  hunger 
and  snowshoes  clog  from  soft  snow  and  catch  derelict 
branches  sticking  up  through  the  drifts.  By  the  time 
you  have  run  half  a  day  beating  against  the  wind,  re- 
versing your  own  tracks  to  find  the  chipped  mark  on 
the  bark  of  the  trees  to  keep  you  on  the  blazed  trail — 
you  are  hungry.  Hall  began  to  nibble  at  his  tallow 
as  he  ran  and  to  snatch  handfuls  of  snow  to  quench  his 
thirst.  At  night  he  kindled  a  roaring  big  white-man 
fire  against  the  wolves,  dried  out  the  thawed  snow  from 
his  back  and  front,  dozed  between  times,  sang  to  keep 
the  loneliness  off,  heard  the  muffled  echo  come  back  to 
him  in  smothered  voice,  and  at  first  streak  of  dawn  ran 
on,  and  on,  and  on. 

By  the  second  night  Hall  had  eaten  all  his  tallow. 


320     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

He  had  also  reefed  in  his  belt  so  that  his  stomach  and 
spine  seemed  to  be  camping  together.  The  snow  con- 
tinued to  fall.  The  trees  swam  past  him  as  he  ran. 
And  the  snowdrifts  lifted  and  fell  as  he  jogged  heavily 
forward.  Of  course,  he  declared  to  himself,  he  was  not 
dizzy.  It  was  the  snow  blindness  or  the  drifts.  He 
was  well  aware  the  second  night  that  if  he  would  have 
let  himself  he  would  have  dug  a  sleeping  hole  in  the 
snow  and  wrapped  himself  in  a  snow  blanket  and  slept 
and  slept ;  but  he  thrashed  himself  awake,  and  set  out 
again,  dead  heavy  with  sleep,  weak  from  fatigue,  stag- 
gering from  hunger;  and  the  wings  on  his  feet  had 
become  weighted  with  lead. 

He  knew  it  was  all  up  with  him  when  he  fell.  He 
knew  if  he  could  get  only  a  half  hour's  sleep,  it  would 
freshen  him  up  so  he  could  go  on.  Lots  of  winter 
travelers  have  known  that  in  the  North ;  and  they  have 
taken  the  half  hour's  sleep;  and  another  half  hour's; 
and  have  never  wakened.  Anyway,  something  wakened 
Hall.  He  heard  the  crackle  of  a  branch.  That  was 
nothing.  Branches  break  to  every  storm,  but  this  was 
like  branches  breaking  under  a  moccasin.  It  was  un- 
believable; there  was  not  the  slightest  odor  of  smoke, 
unless  the  dream  odor  of  his  own  delirious  hunger ;  but 
not  twenty  paces  ahead  crackled  an  Indian  fire,  sur- 
rounded by  buckskin  tepees,  Indians  warming  them- 
selves by  the  fire. 

With  an  unspeakable  revulsion  of  hope  and  hunger, 


THE    DOMAIN    OF    THE    NORTH     821 

Hall  flung  to  his  feet  and  dashed  into  the  middle  of  the 
encampment.  Then  a  tingling  went  over  his  body  like 
the  wakening  from  death,  of  frost  to  life — blind  stab- 
bing terror  obsessed  his  body  and  soul ;  for  the  fire  was 
smokeless,  the  figures  were  speechless,  transparent,  un- 
aware of  his  presence,  very  terribly  still.  His  first 
thought  was  that  he  had  come  on  some  camp  hopeless 
from  the  disaster  of  massacre  or  starvation.  Then  he 
knew  this  was  no  earthly  camp.  He  could  not  tell  how 
the  figures  were  clothed  or  what  they  were.  Only  he 
knew  they  were  not  men.  He  did  not  even  think  of 
ghosts.  All  he  knew  was  it  was  a  death  fire,  a  death 
silence,  death  tepees,  death  figures.  He  fled  through 
the  woods  knowing  only  death  was  behind  him — run- 
ning and  running,  and  never  stopping  till  he  dropped 
exhausted  across  the  fort  doorstep  at  two  in  the  morn- 
ing. He  blurted  out  why  he  had  come.  Then  he 
lapsed  unconscious.  They  filled  him  with  rum.  It  was 
twenty-four  hours  before  he  could  speak. 

"I  don't  know  these  modem  theories  about  halluci- 
nation and  delusions  and  things,"  concluded  Mr.  Hall, 
gazing  reflectively  on  the  memories  of  that  night. 
"I'm  not  much  on  romance  and  that  kind  of  thing !  I 
don't  believe  in  ghosts.  I  don't  know  what  it  was.  All 
I  know  is  it  scared  me  so  It  saved  my  life,  and  it  saved 
the  lives  of  the  rest,  too ;  for  the  relief  party  got  out 
in  time,  though  they  didn't  see  a  sign  of  any  Indian 
camp.    I  don't  know  what  to  make  of  it,  unless  years 


S22     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

ago  some  Indian  camp  had  been  starved  or  massacred 
there,  and  owing  to  my  unusual  condition  I  got  into 
some  clairvoyant  connection  with  that  past.  How- 
ever, there  it  is ;  and  it  would  take  a  pretty  strong  ar- 
gument to  persuade  me  I  didn't  see  anything.  All  the 
other  things  I  thought  I  saw  on  that  trip  certainly 
existed,  and  it  would  be  a  queer  thing  if  the  one  thing 
which  saved  my  life  did  not  exist.  That's  all  I  know, 
and  you  can  make  anything  you  like  of  it." 

So  while  Canada  resents  being  regarded  as  a  fur 
land,  her  domain  of  the  North  sends  down  something 
more  than  roaring  winds — though  winds  are  good 
things  to  shake  dead  leaves  off  the  soul  as  well  as  off 
trees.  Her  domain  of  the  North  rears  more  than  fur- 
bearing  animals.  It  rears  a  race  with  hardihood,  with 
dauntlessness,  with  quiet  dogged  unspeaking  courage ; 
and  that  is  something  to  go  into  the  blood  of  a  nation. 
A  man  who  will  run  on  snowshoes  eighteen  hundred 
miles  behind  a  dog-train  as  a  Senator  I  know  did  in  his 
youth,  and  a  woman  of  middle  life,  who  will  "come  out" 
— as  they  say  in  the  North — and  study  medicine  at 
her  own  expense  that  she  may  minister  to  the  Indians 
where  she  lives — are  not  types  of  a  race  to  lie  down 
whipped  under  Fate.  Canada  will  do  things  in  the 
world  of  nations  shortly.  She  may  do  them  rough- 
handed  ;  but  what  she  does  will  depend  on  the  national 
ideals  she  nurtures  to-day;  and  into  those  ideals  has 
entered  the  spirit  of  the  Domain  of  the  North. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 


FINDING  HERSELF 


One  of  the  questions  which  an  outsider  always  asks 
of  Canada  and  of  which  the  Canadian  never  thinks  is 
— Why  is  Newfoundland  not  a  part  of  Canada  ?  Why 
has  the  lonely  little  Island  never  entered  confedera- 
tion ?  On  the  map  Newfoundland  looks  no  larger  than 
the  area  of  Manitoba  before  the  provincial  boundaries 
were  extended  to  Hudson  Bay.  In  reality,  area  has 
little  to  do  with  Newfoundland's  importance  to  Eng- 
land's possessions  in  North  America.  It  is  that  part 
of  America  nearest  to  Europe.  If  you  measure  it 
north  to  south  and  east  to  west  it  seems  about  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  by  three  hundred  and  fifty  miles; 
but  distance  north  and  south,  east  and  west,  has 
little  to  do  with  Newfoundland's  importance  to 
the  empire.  Newfoundland's  importance  to  the  em- 
pire consists  in  three  fundamental  facts:  New- 
foundland is  the  radiating  center  for  the  fisheries  on 
the  Grand  Banks,  that  submarine  plateau  of  six  hun- 
dred by  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles,  where  are  the 

323 


824.     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

richest  deep-sea  fisheries  in  the  world;  Newfoundland 
lies  gardant  at  the  very  entrance  to  Canada's  great 
waterways ;  and  Newfoundland's  coast  line  is  the  most 
broken  coast  line  in  the  whole  world  affording  count- 
less land-locked,  rock-ribbed  deep-sea  harbors  to  shel- 
ter all  the  fighting  ships  of  the  world. 

What  have  the  deep-sea  fisheries  of  the  Grand 
Banks  to  do  with  a  Greater  Britain  Overseas?  You 
would  not  ask  that  question  if  you  could  see  the  seal- 
ing fleets  set  out  in  spring ;  or  the  whaling  crews  drive 
after  a  great  fin-back  up  north  of  Tilt  Cove;  or  the 
schooners  go  out  with  their  dories  in  tow  for  the  Grand 
Banks  fisheries.  Asked  what  impressed  him  most  in 
the  royal  tour  of  the  present  King  of  England  across 
Canada  and  Newfoundland  several  years  ago,  a  prom- 
inent official  with  the  Prince  answered:  "Newfound- 
land and  the  prairie  provinces."  "Why.'"'  he  was 
asked.  "Men  for  the  navy  and  food  for  the  Empire." 
That  answer  tells  in  a  line  why  Newfoundland  is  abso- 
lutely essential  to  a  Greater  Britain  Overseas.  You 
can't  take  landlubbers,  put  them  on  a  boat  and  have 
seamen.  Sailors  are  bred  to  the  sea,  cradled  in  it, 
salted  with  it  for  generations  before  they  become  such 
mariners  as  hold  England's  ascendency  on  the  seas  of 
the  world.  They  love  the  sea  and  its  roll  and  its  dan- 
gers more  than  all  the  rewards  of  the  land.  Of  such 
men,  and  of  such  only,  are  navies  made  that  win  bat- 
tles.    Come  out  to  Kitty  Vitty,  a  rock-ribbed  cove  be- 


FINDING    HERSELF  325 

hind  St.  John's,  and  listen  to  some  old  mother  in  Israel, 
with  the  bloom  of  the  sea  still  in  her  wilted  cheeks, 
tell  of  losing  her  sons  in  the  seal  fisheries  of  the 
spring,  when  men  go  out  in  crews  of  two  and  three 
hundred  hunting  the  hairy  seal  over  the  ice  floes,  and 
the  floes  break  loose,  and  the  blizzard  comes  down! 
It  isn't  the  twenty  or  thirty  or  fifty  dollar  bonus  a 
head  in  the  seal  hunt  that  lures  them  to  death  in  dark- 
ness and  storm.  It  is  the  call,  the  dare,  the  risk,  the 
romance  of  the  sea  born  in  their  own  blood.  Or  else 
watch  the  fishing  fleets  up  off  the  North  Shore,  down 
on  the  Grand  Banks !  The  schooner  rocks  to  the  silver 
swell  of  the  sea  with  bare  mast  poles.  A  furtive 
woman  comes  up  the  hatchway  and  gazes  with  shaded 
eyes  at  passing  steamers ;  but  the  men  are  out  in  the 
clumsy  black  dories  that  rock  like  a  cradle  to  the  swell 
of  the  sea,  drawing  in — drawing  in — the  line ;  or  sing- 
ing their  sailor  chanties — "Come  all  ye  Newfound- 
landers"— as  meal  of  pork  and  cod  simmers  in  a  pot 
above  a  chip  fire  cooking  on  stones  in  the  bottom  of  the 
boat.  It  isn't  the  one  or  two  hundred  dollars  these 
fishermen  clear  in  a  year — and  it  may  be  said  that  one 
hundred  dollars  cleared  in  a  year  is  opulence — ^that 
holds  them  to  the  wild,  free,  perilous  life.  It  is  the  call 
of  the  sea  in  their  blood.  Of  such  men  are  victorious 
navies  made,  and  if  Canada  is  to  be  anything  more 
than  the  hanger-on  to  the  tail  of  the  kite  of  the  British 
Empire,  she,  too,  must  have  her  navy,  her  men  of  the 


S26     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

sea,  born  and  cradled  and  crooned  and  nursed  by  tlie 
sea.  That  is  Newfoundland's  first  importance  to  a 
Greater  Britain  Overseas. 

Perhaps,  if  the  present  war  had  not  broken  out, 
Canada  would  never  have  realized  Newfoundland's 
second  importance  to  a  Greater  Britain  Overseas  as 
the  outpost  sentinel  guarding  entrance  to  her  water- 
ways. It  would  require  shorter  time  to  transport 
troops  to  Newfoundland  than  to  Suez.  Should  Canada 
ever  be  attacked,  Newfoundland  would  be  a  more  im- 
portant basis  than  Suez.  Two  centuries  ago,  in  fact, 
for  two  whole  centuries,  St.  John's  Harbor  rang  to  the 
conflict  of  warring  nations.  If  ever  war  demanded  the 
bottling  up  and  blockading  of  Canada,  the  basis  for 
that  embargo  would  be  Newfoundland. 

It  may  as  well  be  acknowledged  that  Canada's  east 
coast  affords  few  good  land-locked  harbors.  New- 
foundland's deep-sea  land-locked  harbors  are  so  nu- 
merous you  can  not  count  them.  Your  ship  will  be 
coasting  what  seems  to  be  a  rampart  wall  of  sheer 
black  iron  towering  up  three,  four,  six  hundred  feet 
flat  as  if  planed,  planed  by  the  ice-grind  and  storms 
of  a  million  years  beating  down  from  the  Pole  riding 
thunderous  and  angry  seas.  You  wonder  what  would 
happen  if  a  storm  caught  your  ship  between  those  iron 
walls  and  a  landward  hurricane ;  and  the  captain  tells 
you,  when  the  wind  sheers  nor'-east,  he  always  beats 
for  open  sea.    It  isn't  the  sea  he  fears.    It  is  these  rock 


FINDING   HERSELF  327 

ramparts  and  saw-tooth  reefs  sticking  up  through  the 
lace  fret.  Suddenly  you  twist  round  a  sharp  angle 
of  rock  like  the  half  closed  leaf  of  a  book.  You  slip  in 
behind  the  leaf  of  rock,  and  wriggle  behind  another 
angle — "follow  the  tickles  o'  water"  is,  I  believe,  the 
term — and  there  opens  before  you  a  harbor  cove,  land- 
locked, rock-walled  from  sea  to  sky,  with  the  fisher- 
men's dories  awash  on  a  silver  sea,  with  women  in 
brightly  colored  kirtles  and  top-boots  and  sunbonnets 
busy  over  the  fishing  stages  drying  cod.  Dogs  and 
hogs  are  the  only  domestic  animals  visible.  The  shore 
is  so  rocky  that  fences  are  usually  little  sticks  an- 
chored in  stones.  There  are  not  even  many  children; 
for  the  children  are  off  to  sea  soon  as  they  can  don 
top-boots  and  handle  a  line.  There  is  the  store  of  "the 
planter"  or  outfitter — a  local  merchant,  who  supplies 
schooners  on  shares  for  the  season  and  too  often  holds 
whole  hamlets  in  his  debt.  There  is  the  church.  The 
priest  or  parson  comes  poling  out  to  meet  your  ship 
and  get  his  monthly  or  half-yearly  mail,  and  there  are 
the  httle  whitewashed  cots  of  the  fisher  folk.  It  is  a 
simpler  life  than  the  existence  of  the  habitant  of 
Quebec.  It  is  more  remote  from  modem  stress  than 
the  days  of  the  Tudors.  On  the  north  and  west  shore 
and  in  that  sea  strip  of  Labrador  under  Newfound- 
land's jurisdiction  and  known  in  contradiction  to 
Labrador  as  The  Labrodor — are  whole  hamlets  of  peo- 
ple that  have  never  seen  a  railroad,  a  cow,  a  horse. 


S28     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

They  are  Devon  people,  who  speak  the  dialect  of 
Devon  men  in  Queen  Elizabeth's  day.  You  hear  such 
expressions  as  "enow,"  "forninst,"  "forby";  and  the 
mental  attitude  to  life  is  two  or  three  centuries  old. 

"Why  should  we  pay  for  railroads?"  the  people 
asked  late  as  1898.  *'Our  fathers  used  boats  and  their 
own  legs."  And  one  hamlet  came  out  and  stoned  a 
passing  train.  "Checks — none  of  your  checks  for 
me,"  roared  an  out-port  fisherman  taking  the  train  for 
the  first  time  and  lugging  behind  him  a  huge  canvas 
bag  of  clothes.  "Checks — not  for  me !  I  know  checks ! 
When  the  banks  busted,  I  had  your  checks ;  and  much 
good  they  were."  This  was  late  as  '98,  and  back  from 
the  pulp  mills  of  the  interior  and  the  railroad  you  will 
find  conditions  as  antiquated  to-day. 

If  Newfoundland  is  absolutely  essential  to  a  Greater 
Britain  Overseas,  why  is  she  not  part  of  Canada?  Be- 
cause Canada  refused  to  take  her  in.  Because  Canada 
had  not  big  enough  vision  to  see  her  need  of  this  small- 
est of  the  American  colonies.  For  the  same  reason  that 
reciprocity  failed  between  Canada  and  the  United 
States — ^because  when  Newfoundland  would  have  come 
in,  Canada  was  lethargic.  Nobody  was  big  enough 
politically  to  seize  and  swing  the  opportunity.  Be- 
cause when  Canada  was  ready,  Newfoundland  was  no 
longer  in  the  mood  to  come  in ;  and  nobody  in  New- 
foundland was  big  enough  to  seize  and  swing  an  op- 
portunity for  the  empire. 


FINDING    HERSELF  329 

It  was  in  the  nineties.  Fish  had  fallen  to  a  ruinous 
price  and  for  some  temporary  reason  the  fishing  was 
poor.  There  had  been  bank  kiting  in  Newfoundland's 
financial  system.  She  had  no  railroads  and  few  steam- 
ships. Her  mines  had  not  been  exploited,  and  she  did 
not  know  her  own  wealth  in  the  pulp-wood  areas  of  the 
interior.  In  fact,  there  are  sections  of  Northern  New- 
foundland not  yet  explored  inland.  Every  bank  in  the 
colony  had  collapsed.  Newfoundland  emissaries  came 
to  Ottawa  to  feel  the  pulse  for  federation.  The  popu- 
lation at  that  time  was  something  under  two  hundred 
thousand. 

Now  Canada  has  one  very  bad  British  characteristic. 
She  has  the  John  Bull  trick  of  drawing  herself  up  to 
every  new  proposal  with  an  air  of  *'What  is  that  to 
us.?"  At  this  time  Canada  herself  was  in  bad  way. 
She  had  just  completed  her  first  big  transcontinental. 
Times  were  dull.  The  Crown  Colony  of  Newfound- 
land did  not  come  begging  admission  to  confederation. 
No  political  party  could  do  that  and  live ;  for  politics 
in  Newfoundland  are  a  fanatical  religion.  I  have 
heard  the  warden  of  the  penitentiary  say  that  if  it 
were  not  for  politics  he  would  never  have  any  inmates. 
It  is  a  fact  that  out-port  prisons  have  been  closed  for 
lack  of  inmates,  but  long  as  elections  recur,  come 
broken  heads.  So  the  Crown  Colony  did  not  seek  ad- 
mission. It  came  feeling  the  Ottawa  pulse,  and  the 
Ottawa  pulse  was  slow  and  cold.    "What's  Newfound- 


S30     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

land  to  us?"  said  Canada.  One  of  the  commissioners 
told  me  the  real  hitch  was  the  terms  on  which  the  Do- 
minion should  assume  the  Crown  Colony's  small  public 
debt;  so  the  chance  passed  unseized.  Newfoundland 
get  herself  to  do  what  Canada  had  done,  when  the 
United  States  refused  reciprocity.  She  built  national 
railways.  She  launched  a  system  of  national  ships. 
She  nearly  bankrupted  her  public  treasury  with  public 
works  and  ultimately  handed  her  transportation  sys- 
tem over  to  semi-private  management.  Outside  inter- 
ests began  buying  the  pulp-wood  areas.  Pulp  became 
one  of  the  great  industries.  The  mines  of  the  east 
shore  picked  up.  There  was  a  boom  in  whaling.  World 
conditions  in  trade  improved.  By  the  time  that  the 
Dominion  had  awakened  to  the  value  of  Newfoundland 
no  party  in  Newfoundland  would  have  dared  to  men- 
tion confederation,  and  that  is  the  status  to-day.  One 
can  hardly  imagine  this  status  continuing  long.  The 
present  war,  or  the  lessons  of  the  present  war,  may 
awaken  both  sides  to  the  advantages  of  union.  Sooner 
or  later,  for  her  own  sake  solely,  Canada  must  have 
Newfoundland;  and  it  is  up  to  Canada  to  offer  terms 
to  win  the  most  ancient  of  British  colonies  in  America. 
British  settlement  in  Newfoundland  dates  a  century 
prior  to  settlement  in  Acadia  and  Virginia.  Devon 
men  came  to  fish  before  the  British  government  had 
set  up  any  proprietary  claim. 


FINDING   HERSELF  331 

II 

And  now  eliminate  the  details  of  Canada's  status 
among  the  nations  and  consider  only  the  salient  undis- 
puted facts : 

Her  population  has  come  to  her  along  four  main 
lines  of  motive;  seeking  to  realize  religious  ideals; 
seeking  to  realize  political  ideals;  seeking  the  free 
adventurous  life  of  the  hunter;  seeking — in  modern 
day — freehold  of  land.  One  main  current  runs 
through  all  these  motives — religious  freedom,  polit- 
ical freedom,  outdoor  vocations  in  freedom,  and 
freehold  of  land.  This  is  a  good  flavor  for  the  in- 
gredients of  nationality. 

Conditioning  these  movements  of  population  have 
been  Canada's  climate,  her  backwoods  and  prairie 
and  frontier  hardship — challenging  the  weakling, 
strengthening  the  strong.  No  country  affords  more 
opportunity  to  the  fit  man  and  none  is  cruder  to  the 
unfit  than  Canada.  I  like  this  fact  that  Canada  is 
hard  at  first.  It  is  the  flaming  sword  guarding  the 
Paradise  of  eff*ort  from  the  vices  of  inert  softened 
races.  Diamonds  are  hard.  Charcoals  are  soft,  though 
both  are  the  very  same  thing. 

Canada  aff^ords  the  shortest  safest  route  to  the 
Orient. 

Canada  has  natural  resources  of  mine,  forest,  fish- 


332     THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

ery,  land  to  supply  an  empire  of  a  hundred  million; 
to  supply  Europe,  if  need  arose. 

She  must  some  day  become  one  of  the  umpires  of 
fate  on  the  Pacific. 

She  yearly  interweaves  tighter  commercial  bonds 
with  the  United  States,  yet  refuses  to  come  under 
American  government.  It  may  be  predicted  both  these 
conditions  will  remain  permanent. 

Panama  will  quicken  her  west  coast  to  a  second 
Japan. 

Yearly  the  West  will  exert  greater  political  power, 
and  the  East  less ;  for  the  preponderance  of  immigra- 
tion settles  West  not  East. 

As  long  as  she  has  free  land  Canada  will  be  free 
of  labor  unrest,  but  the  dangers  of  Industrialism 
menace  her  In  a  transfer  of  population  from  farm  to 
factory. 

In  twenty  years  Canada  will  have  as  many  British 
born  within  her  borders  as  there  were  Englishmen  in 
England  in  the  days  of  Queen  Elizabeth. 

In  twenty  years  Canada  will  have  more  foreign- 
bom  than  there  are  native-bom  Canadians. 

Her  pressing  problems  to-day  are  the  amalgama- 
tion of  the  foreigner  through  her  schools ;  a  working 
arrangement  with  the  Oriental  fair  to  him  as  to  her; 
the  development  of  her  natural  resources ;  the  anchor- 
ing of  the  people  to  the  land;  and  the  building  of  a 
system  of  powerful  national  defense  by  sea  and  land. 


FINDING    HERSELF  S33 

Her  constitution  is  elastic  and  pliable  to  every  new 
emergency — it  may  be,  too  pliable ;  and  her  system  of 
justice  stands  high. 

She  has  a  fanatical  patriotism;  but  it  is  not  yet 
vocal  in  art,  or  literature ;  and  it  is — do  not  mistake  it 
— loyalty  to  an  ideal,  not  to  a  dynasty,  nor  to  a  coun- 
try. She  loves  Britain  because  Britain  stands  for  that 
ideal. 

Stand  back  from  all  these  facts!  They  may  be 
slow-moving  ponderous  facts.  They  may  be  contra- 
dictory and  inconsistent.  What  that  moves  ever  is 
consistent?  But  like  a  fleet  tacking  to  sea,  though  the 
course  shift  and  veer,  it  is  ever  forward.  Forward 
whither — do  you  ask  of  Canada.? 

There  is  no  man  with  an  open  free  mind  can  ponder 
these  facts  and  not  answer  forthwith  and  without  fal- 
tering— to  a  democratized  edition  of  a  Greater  Britain 
Overseas.  Only  a  world  cataclysm  or  national  up- 
heaval displacing  every  nation  from  its  foundations 
can  shake  Canada  from  that  destiny. 

Will  she  grow  closer  to  Britain  or  farther  off?  '  Will 
she  grow  closer  to  the  United  States  or  farther  off? 
Will  she  fight  Japan  or  league  with  her?  Will  she  rig 
up  a  working  arrangement  with  the  Hindu? 

Every  one  of  these  questions  is  aside  from  the  main 
fact — England  will  not  interfere  with  her  destiny. 
The  United  States  will  not  interfere  with  her  destiny. 
Canada  has  her  destiny  in  her  own  hands,  and  what 


334f    THE    CANADIAN    COMMONWEALTH 

she  works  out  both  England  and  the  United  States  will 
bless ;  but  with  as  many  British  born  In  her  boundaries 
anchored  to  freehold  of  land  as  made  England  great  In 
the  days  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  unless  history  reverse  it- 
self and  fate  make  of  facts  dice  tossed  to  ruin  by 
malignant  furies,  then  Canada's  destiny  can  be  only 
one — a  Greater  Britain  Overseas. 


THE  END 


INDEX 


INDEX 


ALBERTA:  size  of,  16,  39;  coal  deposits  of,  38;  investment 
of  British  capital  in,  104;  distance  from  seaboard,  180; 
rate  from  on  wheat  to  Fort  William,  187-188;  distance 
from  Montreal,  195 ;  from  Great  Lakes,  199. 

"AMERICANIZING  OF  CANADA,"   discussion  of,  61-79. 

AMERICANS :  emigration  of  to  Canada,  65,  72,  21Z ;  invest- 
ments of  in  Canada,  66,  80,  92;  as  pioneers,  74,  76;  sell 
ranches  as  rawnches,  105 ;  trade  of  with  Canada,  128 ;  atti- 
tude of  Americans  in  Canadian  Northwest  to  Monroe 
Doctrine,  244;  view  of  opportunity,  280.  See  also  United 
States 

ARBITRATION  ACT,  defects  of,  220. 

BELL,  GRAHAM,  a  Canadian,  278. 

BIG  BUSINESS,  does  not  dominate  government  in  Canada, 
212,  223. 

BORDEN,  ROBERT :  social  prestige  of,  4 ;  a  self-made  man, 
53 ;  new  premier,  91 ;  one  of  Canada's  great  men,  109 ; 
naval  policy  of,  283,  285. 

BRITISH  COLUMBIA :  demands  self-government,  11 ;  rail- 
way to  planned,  14;  larger  than  two  Germanics,  16;  cli- 
mate of,  22;  coal  deposits  of,  38;  description  of,  40-41; 
investment  of  British  capital  in,  104 ;  opposes  Oriental  im- 
migration, 129-133 ;  coming  of  Hindus  into  and  problem 
of,  141  et  seq. 

BRITISH  NORTH  AMERICA  ACT:  the  Canadian  Con- 
stitution, 11;  mentioned,  42,  111,  245;  elasticity  of,  51; 
constitution  of  Canada,  223 ;  provisions  of,  228. 

BROWN,  GEORGE,  favors  reciprocity,  82. 

CABINET,  how  chosen  and  to  whom  responsible,  229. 

CANADA  NORTHERN :  builds  repair  shops  at  Port  Mann, 
179 ;  uses  electric  power  in  tunnels,  182 ;  aided  by  govern- 
ment, 193. 

CANADIAN  PACIFIC  RAILWAY:  builds  repair  shops  at 
Coquitlam,  179;  tunnel  of  through  Mount  Stephen,  182; 
aided  by  government,  193. 

CANADIAN  SOO  CANAL:  tonnage  passing  through,  14; 
influence  of  in  reducing  freight  rates,  7&. 

CHINA,  an  awakened  giant,  168. 

337 


338  INDEX 

CHINESE:  agitation  against  on  West  Coast,  129;  head  tax 
upon,  130, 164 ;  a  separate  problem  from  that  of  the  Hindu, 
138;  in  British  Columbia,  159-167. 

CHURCHES,  well  attended  in  Canada,  252-255. 

COBALT  :    discovery  of  silver  at,  34 ;  Ijoom  in,  67. 

"COBDEN-BRIGHT  SCHOOL,"  mentioned,  82,  84. 

COCKNEYS,  Canadian  hostihty  toward,  52. 

CONNAUGHT,  DUKE  OF,  rebukes  hp-loyalist,  48. 

CONSERVATIVES:  tariff  views  of,  81-86;  and  appoint- 
ment of  judges,  234;  support  Family  Compact,  242;  princi- 
ples of,  242-244;  support  Navy  Bill,  283;  oppose  Laurier's 
naval  program,  285. 

DAWSON,  GEORGE,  on  coal  deposits  of  Alberta  and  Brit- 
ish Columbia,  38. 

"DIRECT  PASSAGE"  LAW:  enacted,  130,  142;  attempt  to 
evade,  143,  153. 

DIVORCE,  low  rate  of,  264. 

DOUKHOBORS  :  are  accumulating  wealth,  117;  law-abiding, 
118;  influence  of  priests  upon,  124. 

DURHAM,  LORD:  work  of  in  Canada,  226-228;  report  of, 
274. 

ENGLAND,  see  Great  Britain. 

"FAMILY  COMPACT":   a  governing  clique,  9;  mentioned, 

14,  226,  242. 
FRANCHISE,  in  Canada,  232-233. 
FUR  TRADE,  account  of,  294-322. 

GEORGE,  LLOYD :  mentioned,  56,  57 ;  Canada  not  inter- 
ested in  theories  of,  58;  effects  of  tax  system  of  upon  in- 
vestment in  Canada,  104. 

GEORGIAN  BAY  SHIP  CANAL,  proposed,  194. 

GLADSTONE,  EDWARD  E.,  attitude  of  toward  colonies, 
42. 

GORDON,  CHARLES,  investigates  mining  strike,  117. 

GOVERNOR-GENERAL:  appointment  and  powers  of,  43- 
44,  228-230;  appoints  provincial  judges,  236. 

GRAND  BANKS,  mentioned,  323. 

GRAND  TRUNK  PACIFIC:  has  dock  in  Seattle,  173,  174; 
its  low  mountain  grade,  182. 

GREAT  BRITAIN:  withholds  self-government  from  Ore- 
gon region,  11 ;  food  requirements  of,  36;  grants  no  trade 
favors  to  her  colonies,  43 ;  dependence  of  Canada  upon, 
43-45 ;  trade  of  with  the  United  States,  62-63 ;  her  de- 
pendencies, 95;  immigration  from,  95-1 10;  allied  with 
Japan,  127,  132;  as  a  world  policeman,  137;  shipyards  of, 
171 ;  need  of  shortest  wheat  route  to,  197 ;  eighty  per  cent, 
of  Canada's  agricultural  products  go  to,  202 ;  acquires  Can- 


INDEX  S39 

ada,  224;  secret  of  her  success  as  a  colonial  power,  269; 
overplus  of  women  in,  265 ;  rise  of  as  a  world  power,  269 ; 
her  navy  Canada's  chief  defense,  289;  what  defeat  of  her 
navy  would  mean  to  Canada,  292-293 ;  importance  of 
Newfoundland  to  her  possessions  in  America,  323;  will 
not  interfere  with  Canada's  destiny,  333. 
GREAT  CLAY  BELT :   described,  33 ;  mentioned,  303. 

HENDRY,  ANTHONY,  first  white  fur-trader  in  Saskatche- 
wan country,  314. 

HILL,  JAMES:  he  and  associates  buy  large  coal  areas,  66; 
predicts  bread  famine  in  United  States,  88;  on  rights  of 
the  public,  175 ;  on  western  fruit  crop,  181 ;  wheat  empire 
of,  198,  208 ;  a  Canadian,  278. 

HINDUS :  agitation  against  in  British  Columbia,  129 ;  prob- 
lem of  in  Canada,  138-167;  possible  effects  on  constitu- 
tion of  unlimited  immigration  of,  245 ;  troops  rushed 
across  Canada,  286. 

HOPKINSON:  murder  of,  144;  had  secret  information  re- 
garding Hindus,  144,  153. 

HUDSON  BAY  RAILROAD,  account  of,  191-209. 

HUDSON'S  BAY  COMPANY:  monopoly  of,  11;  journals 
of  mention  mineral  deposits,  35 ;  governor  of  testifies  that 
farming  can  not  succeed  in  Rupert's  Land,  271 ;  effect  of 
contentions  regarding  Northwest,  276;  trade  of,  297-298; 
former  monopoly  of,  299;  mentioned,  302. 

HUDSON  STRAITS,  the  crux  of  the  Hudson  Bay  route, 
206-209. 

HUNTERS'  LODGES,  raids  of,  8. 

ICELANDERS,  story  of  in  Manitoba,  122-123. 

IMMIGRATION :  increase  in  ten  years,  20 ;  from  Great 
Britain,  51,  95-110;  American  immigration  into  Canada, 
61-79;  from  continental  Europe,  111-126;  from  the  Orient, 
127-167 ;  probable  effect  of  Panama  Canal  upon,  176. 

IMPERIAL  FEDERATION,  a  dead  issue  in  Canada,  47. 

INDIANS :  number  of  in  the  fur  trade,  294;  rights  of  Indian 
wives  married  to  white  men,  266. 

INDUSTRIAL  WORKERS  OF  THE  WORLD :  in  Canada, 
219;  program  of,  221. 

JAPAN :  dominates  fishing  industry  of  the  Pacific,  24 ;  alli- 
ance of  with  Great  Britain,  127;  attitude  of  on  equality 
question,  130-132;  activity  of  on  West  Coast,  134-136; 
controls  seventy-two  per  cent,  of  the  shipping  of  the  Pa- 
cific, 136,  178;  future  influence  of,  137;  attempt  to  draw 
into  Hindu  quarrel,  146;  demands  room  to  expand,  168; 
becomes  a  world  power,  269;  future  relations  of  with 
Canada,  333. 


340  INDEX 

JAPANESE:  inrush  of  into  British  Columbia,  129;  limita- 
tions on  immigration  of,  130;  exclusion  of  becomes  party 
shibboleth,  133;  a  separate  problem  from  that  of  the 
Hindu,  138. 

JUDGES,  position  and  powers  of,  233-236. 

KOOTENAY,  mining  boom  in,  66-67. 

LABRADOR,  as  a  fur  country,  302-304. 

LABRODOR,  THE,  under  jurisdiction  of  Newfoundland, 
327. 

LAURIER,  SIR  WILFRED :  social  prestige  of,  4 ;  helps  al- 
lay racial  antagonisms,  7;  prediction  of  as  to  Canada's 
future,  17;  supports  Boer  War,  31-32;  a  self-made  man, 
53 ;  a  free-trader,  82 ;  and  reciprocity,  89-91 ;  one  of  Can- 
ada's great  men,  109 ;  and  a  Dominion  navy,  283,  285 ; 
mentioned,  243. 

LESSER  GREAT  LAKES,  fisheries  of,  39. 

LIBERALS :  favor  free  trade,  82 ;  seek  reciprocity  agree- 
ment, 83-85;  launch  two  more  transcontinentals,  86;  and 
appointment  of  judges,  234 ;  organize  to  oust  Family  Com- 
pact, 242;  principles  of,  242-244;  oppose  Naval  Bill,  283, 
285. 

LITERATURE :  no  great  national  in  Canada,  262 ;  Canadians 
slow  to  recognize  writers,  279;  most  Canadian  books  first 
published  out  of  Canada,  79. 

LORD  SELKIRK'S  SETTLERS,  come  to  Canada,  6. 

LOYALISTS,  see  United  Empibie  Loyalists. 

MACDONALD,  SIR  JOHN :  influence  of  upon  Canadian 
constitution,  11-12;  comes  up  from  penury,  53;  seeks  tariff 
concessions  from  the  United  States,  81 ;  tariff  views  of, 
83 ;  launches  Canadian  Pacific  Railway,  86 ;  one  of  Cana- 
da's great  men,  109;  mentioned,  243. 

MACKENZIE,  ALEXANDER:  comes  up  from  penury,  53; 
mentioned,  81 ;  a  free-trader,  82 ;  a  man  of  the  North,  295. 

MACKENZIE,  WILLIAM  LYON,  a  leader  in  rebellion  of 
1837-8,  226. 

MANITOBA:  almost  as  large  as  British  Isles,  16,  39;  coal 
deposits  in,  38;  distance  of  from  Montreal  and  Hudson 
Bay,  195. 

MANITOBA  SCHOOL  CASE,  mentioned  44,  83. 

MANN,  DAN,  comes  up  from  penury,  53. 

MARITIME  PROVINCES,  described,  221. 

MONROE  DOCTRINE:  mentioned,  32,  45,  285;  Canadian 
opinion  of,  169,  288;  attitude  of  French  NationaHsts  to- 
ward, 244. 

MOUNTED  POLICE:  say  crime  in  Northwest  is  increas- 
ing, 118;  efficiency  of,  238r240. 


INDEX  841 


MUNRO,  DOCTOR,  quoted  regarding  Oriental  immigration, 
162-163. 

NATIONALISTS:   oppose  Navy  Bill,  283,  285;  and  outside 

entanglements,  244. 
NAVY  BILL :   defeated,  284. 
NEW  BRUNSWICK,  mentioned,  22. 
NEWFOUNDLAND:    mentioned,   195;  description  of,  323- 

328;  why  not  a  part  of  Canada,  323-330. 
NEW  FRANCE,  conquest  of,  6. 

NORTH  AMERICA  ACT,  see  British  North  America  Act. 
NOVA  SCOTIA,  mentioned,  22. 

ONTARIO:   first  settlement  of,  3;  more  ultra-English  than 

England,  4 ;  description  of,  33-35. 
OSLER,  WILLIAM,  a  Canadian,  278. 

PANAMA  CANAL:  mentioned,  14;  influence  of  upon  com- 
merce, 27 ;  turns  Pacific  into  a  front  door,  41 ;  what  it 
means  to  Canada,  168-190;  will  reverse  conduits  of 
trade,  280. 

PAPINEAU,  LOUIS,  a  leader  in  the  rebellion  of  1837-8,  226. 

PARLIAMENT :  composition  and  powers  of,  230-233 ;  a  ses- 
sion every  year,  234. 

PEACE  RIVER  COUNTRY:  mentioned,  16;  wheat  grown 
in,  271 ;  wheat  lands  of,  300. 

PEEL,  PAUL :    lost  to  Canada,  279. 

PRAIRIE  PROVINCES :  resources  of,  35-40;  probable 
wheat  production  of  in  twenty  years,  183. 

PRINCE  EDWARD  ISLAND,  mentioned,  22. 

QUEBEC,  PROVINCE  OF:  more  Catholic  than  the  Pope, 

4;  size  of,  16;  description  of,  27-32. 
QUEBEC  ACT,  first  constitution  of  Canada,  225. 

RAILWAY  COMMISSION,  192. 

REBELLION  OF  1837 :   significance  of,  8. 

RECIPROCITY:    Canadians  seek,  15;  why  rejected,  80-94. 

RED  RIVER,  demands  self-government,  11. 

RELIGION,  influence  of  in  Canada,  252-259. 

REVILLONS :   yearly  fur  trade  of,  298;  inquiry  made  of  as 

to  number  of  white  hunters,  302. 
RIEL  REBELLION,  mentioned,  227,  284. 
ROOSEVELT,  THEODORE,  sends  fleet  round  the  world, 

128 
ROYAL  NORTHWEST  MOUNTED  POLICE,  absence  of 

flunkeyism  among,  49. 


34)2  INDEX 

SASKATCHEWAN :   area  of,  16,  39;  coal  deposits  in,  38. 

SCHURMAN,  JACOB  G.,  a  Canadian,  278. 

SIFTON,  CLIFFORD :    a  self-made  man,  53 ;  campaign  for 

immigrants,  70-74,  87. 
SMITH,  GOLDWIN,  opinion  of  Canadian  loyalty,  47-48. 
SOCIALISM:   plays  little  part  in  Canadian  affairs,  248-251; 

in  Canada,  210,  222. 
SOCIALISTS,  have  never  collected  money  to  buy  rifles,  149. 
SPORT,  interest  in  and  forms  of,  259-262. 
ST.  LAWRENCE  RIVER,  improvements  along,  192-196. 
STRATHCONA,  LORD:   prophecy  of  regarding  the  prairie 

provinces,  39,  170 ;  once  a  fur-trader,  295. 
STRATHCONA  HORSE,  daring  of  in  South  Africa,  49. 
SUDBURY,  nickel  mines  of,  34. 

TAFT,  WILLIAM  H.,  and  reciprocity,  45,  89-91. 
TEACHERS,  lack  of  recognition  of  services  of,  125-126. 
"TWILIGHT  ZONE" :    borderland    between    Dominion    and 

provincial  powers,   145 ;   embarrassing  in  labor  disputes, 

219. 

UNITED  EMPIRE  LOYALISTS:  first  people  Ontario,  3; 
mentioned,  6,  7,  9,  225,  274,  295. 

UNITED  STATES:  effects  of  Civil  War  upon  unity  of,  2; 
emigration  to  from  Canada,  15 ;  population  of  compared 
with  that  of  Canada,  18,  269,  275 ;  absorption  of  immigra- 
tion by,  20 ;  spring  wheat  production  of,  Zl ;  government 
of  compared  with  that  of  Canada,  50-51 ;  transportation 
facilities  between  Canada  and  the  United  States,  64 ;  trade 
of  with  Canada,  64-65 ;  lumbermen  from  our  timber  lands 
in  Dominion,  76;  and  reciprocity,  81-94;  increase  in  value 
of  fruit  lands  in,  105;  similarity  to  Canada,  113;  political 
corruption  in,  116;  why  she  built  Panama  Canal,  128,  187; 
problems  of  immigration  in,  120,  130,  176;  emigration  to 
Canada  from,  170 ;  shipyards  in,  171 ;  expectations  of  Pan- 
ama, 174 ;  little  aid  given  by  to  shipping,  179 ;  how  it  trans- 
ports its  wheat  crop,  183 ;  a  source  of  the  British  wheat 
supply,  197 ;  acreage  of  wheat  in,  201 ;  increase  of  urban 
population  in,  214;  as  a  competitor  of  Canada,  216; 
churches  of  poorly  attended,  252 ;  friendly  relations  of 
with  Canada,  273 ;  comparison  of  with  Canada,  269-277 ; 
Canadians  grateful  they  are  not  as,  277 ;  a  "big  ship,"  278 ; 
what  menaces  United  States  menaces  Canada,  287;  for- 
eign policies  of  two  countries  similar,  292 ;  even  closer 
commercial  relations  of  with  Canada,  332;  will  not  inter- 
fere with  Canada's  destiny,  332. 

VAN  HORNE,  SIR  WILLIAM  C,  comes  up  from  penury, 
53. 


INDEX  343 

WALKER,  HORATIO,  lost  to  Canada,  279. 
WAR  OF  1812,  cripples  Canada  financially,  7. 
WELLAND  CANAL,  not  wide  enough,  194. 
WILSON,  WOODROW,  tariff  reductions  under,  94. 

YUKON ;   mentioned,  16 ;  gold  discovered  in,  23. 


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